Does the Past Exist Yet?

By Robert Lanza, MD

Recent discoveries require us to rethink our understanding of history. "The histories of the universe," said renowned physicist Stephen Hawking "depend on what is being measured, contrary to the usual idea that the universe has an objective observer-independent history."

Is it possible we live and die in a world of illusions? Physics tells us that objects exist in a suspended state until observed, when they collapse in to just one outcome. Paradoxically, whether events happened in the past may not be determined until sometime in your future -- and may even depend on actions that you haven't taken yet.

In 2002, scientists carried out an amazing experiment, which showed that particles of light "photons" knew -- in advance −- what their distant twins would do in the future. They tested the communication between pairs of photons -- whether to be either a wave or a particle. Researchers stretched the distance one of the photons had to take to reach its detector, so that the other photon would hit its own detector first. The photons taking this path already finished their journeys -− they either collapse into a particle or don't before their twin encounters a scrambling device. Somehow, the particles acted on this information before it happened, and across distances instantaneously as if there was no space or time between them. They decided not to become particles before their twin ever encountered the scrambler. It doesn't matter how we set up the experiment. Our mind and its knowledge is the only thing that determines how they behave. Experiments consistently confirm these observer-dependent effects.

More recently (Science 315, 966, 2007), scientists in France shot photons into an apparatus, and showed that what they did could retroactively change something that had already happened. As the photons passed a fork in the apparatus, they had to decide whether to behave like particles or waves when they hit a beam splitter. Later on - well after the photons passed the fork - the experimenter could randomly switch a second beam splitter on and off. It turns out that what the observer decided at that point, determined what the particle actually did at the fork in the past. At that moment, the experimenter chose his history.

Of course, we live in the same world. Particles have a range of possible states, and it's not until observed that they take on properties. So until the present is determined, how can there be a past? According to visionary physicist John Wheeler (who coined the word "black hole"), "The quantum principle shows that there is a sense in which what an observer will do in the future defines what happens in the past." Part of the past is locked in when you observe things and the "probability waves collapse." But there's still uncertainty, for instance, as to what's underneath your feet. If you dig a hole, there's a probability you'll find a boulder. Say you hit a boulder, the glacial movements of the past that account for the rock being in exactly that spot will change as described in the Science experiment.

But what about dinosaur fossils? Fossils are really no different than anything else in nature. For instance, the carbon atoms in your body are "fossils" created in the heart of exploding supernova stars. Bottom line: reality begins and ends with the observer. "We are participators," Wheeler said "in bringing about something of the universe in the distant past." Before his death, he stated that when observing light from a quasar, we set up a quantum observation on an enormously large scale. It means, he said, the measurements made on the light now, determines the path it took billions of years ago.

Like the light from Wheeler's quasar, historical events such as who killed JFK, might also depend on events that haven't occurred yet. There's enough uncertainty that it could be one person in one set of circumstances, or another person in another. Although JFK was assassinated, you only possess fragments of information about the event. But as you investigate, you collapse more and more reality. According to biocentrism, space and time are relative to the individual observer - we each carry them around like turtles with shells.

History is a biological phenomenon − it's the logic of what you, the animal observer experiences. You have multiple possible futures, each with a different history like in the Science experiment. Consider the JFK example: say two gunmen shot at JFK, and there was an equal chance one or the other killed him. This would be a situation much like the famous Schrödinger's cat experiment, in which the cat is both alive and dead − both possibilities exist until you open the box and investigate.

"We must re-think all that we have ever learned about the past, human evolution and the nature of reality, if we are ever to find our true place in the cosmos," says Constance Hilliard, a historian of science at UNT. Choices you haven't made yet might determine which of your childhood friends are still alive, or whether your dog got hit by a car yesterday. In fact, you might even collapse realities that determine whether Noah's Ark sank. "The universe," said John Haldane, "is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than wecan suppose."

Biocentrism (BenBella Books) lays out Lanza's theory of everything.

Conscious Evolution and the Integration of Science and Spirituality

By Barbary Marx Hubbard

We are today living through a crisis that could destroy civilization and our essential life support systems, but we are also living through a deeper phase-change in evolution itself. We are entering the first age of conscious evolution -- the evolution of evolution itself, from unconsciousness to a conscious choice.

This phase-change began noticeably and violently when the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on Japan in 1945. A signal went through the social body that we now have the power to destroy our world -- self-centered consciousness with this degree of power is not viable in the long run.

We are the first species that faces extinction by its own acts and knows it.

This is just the beginning. Through the advent of evolutionary technologies such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, robotics, space travel, the quest for zero-point energy devices and more, the human species is gaining powers it had previously attributed only to gods.

But not only can we destroy our own life support system, we can also catch a glimmer of our potential for a radical transformation of an evolutionary order.

When we imagine ourselves going through this crisis, hard as it may be, and project ourselves forward into the more distant future, even a mere 100 years, we see the emergence of a "universal species" capable of co-evolving with nature and co-creating with spirit. We learn to be in alignment with the drive in nature toward complexity and consciousness -- on this Earth, in our solar system, and eventually in the galaxies beyond.

Out of our many emergencies is coming emergence, and out of competition a greater cooperation, as social networking escalates among those who are innovating and transforming. We appear on the threshold of a nonlinear, exponential connectivity that is highly creative.

The integration of science, spirituality, and technology is happening.

One of the great advances of science itself has been the relatively recent discovery of cosmogenesis, the universe story, as Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry call it: the mysterious, indeed awesome awareness that out of No Thing at All has evolved Everything that was, that is, and will be. We are participants in an evolutionary drama, our own birth narrative. We are becoming the universe in person!

The mystery of the process of creation is beyond human understanding, yet we note through science many recurring patterns. We see how nature has evolved crisis after crisis toward higher consciousness, complexity and order for billions of years, often pressed forward by the crises themselves.

Our new scientifically-based evolutionary universe story has given us the insight that nature and we ourselves are evolving. There is a direction in this process toward more complex order, more awareness, and more freedom to destroy or to evolve.

Many of us are working together toward something we have never seen on any scale before -- a sustainable, evolvable, co-creative society in which each person is encouraged to do and be his or her best. A global mind/heart of coherence and love is arising in the midst of fear, competition and chaos.

An evolutionary spirituality is emerging, experienced as the impulse of evolution, the process of creation, the implicate order, a patterning process coming through our own hearts. It is felt as the sacred core of the evolutionary spiral, the evolving godhead arising, or even incarnating within each of us as our own impulse to co-create. It is the "creator-within" expressing itself uniquely through each person as a new form of "social cosmogenesis." The generating power of universal evolution is guiding us toward a more synergistic, cooperative democracy.

Through the natural evolution of complexity and consciousness, driven by mounting advances in communication, connectivity and spiritual practices, millions of us are gaining the experience of being connected with the Field out of which everything is co-arising, internalized as inner guidance, the quiet voice of God.

It is as though we're undergoing the evolution of our species not as extraordinary beings, but as the new norm. Great avatars, saints, and mystics had paved the way. Pioneering souls of the 21st century are exploring how to become creators, co-evolvers, universal humans.

This emerging human has been called by many names. Teilhard de Chardin called it the Ultra Human, or Homo progressivus, in whom the "flame of expectation burns, attracted toward the future as an organism progressing toward the unknown." Sri Aurobindo, the great Indian evolutionary sage, called this the Gnostic Human, the individual in whom the Consciousness Force itself, the supramental power of universal creativity, incarnates and begins to transform the body/mind into the very cells that evolve beyond the human phase.

Others have called this Homo noeticus, a being of gnosis or deep knowing of the Field out of which we are co-arising. Or Homo divina, as Sister Judy Cauley puts it. Or the universal human, connected through the heart to the whole of life, awakening from within by the core of the spiral of evolution. The implicate order is becoming explicate in us, turning into the essential self, animated by a passionate life-purpose to express our creativity.

There is no reason to assume that the evolution of humanity stops with today's form of Homo sapiens sapiens. We are obviously a young species, immature, incomplete, and actually not viable in our current state of consciousness. The ultimate hope, I believe, is that the evolution of consciousness and freedom is occurring naturally within millions of us, as a sort of spontaneous evolution, an inner punctuated equilibrium amidst the chaos, realizing that as the offspring of universal evolution, we are integral parts of nature, that the evolutionary process is happening within us when we open our eyes to see it, and be it, and do our best to participate in it.

As spirituality, science and technology blend, the evolutionary story becomes in us the sacred way of conscious evolution: a developmental path toward the co-evolution of a universal humanity.

Bugs Eat Wast and Produce Petrol

Look at what's new in Silicon Valley. Could this be part of our energy future?



LINK to article

“Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.”

He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.

Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.

Mr Pal is a senior director of LS9, one of several companies in or near Silicon Valley that have spurned traditional high-tech activities such as software and networking and embarked instead on an extraordinary race to make $140-a-barrel oil (£70) from Saudi Arabia obsolete. “All of us here – everyone in this company and in this industry, are aware of the urgency,” Mr Pal says.
Related Links

.....snip.........

What is most remarkable about what they are doing is that instead of trying to re engineer the global economy – as is required, for example, for the use of hydrogen fuel – they are trying to make a product that is interchangeable with oil. The company claims that this “Oil 2.0” will not only be renewable but also carbon negative – meaning that the carbon it emits will be less than that sucked from the atmosphere by the raw materials from which it is made.

Because crude oil (which can be refined into other products, such as petroleum or jet fuel) is only a few molecular stages removed from the fatty acids normally excreted by yeast or E. coli during fermentation, it does not take much fiddling to get the desired result.

For fermentation to take place you need raw material, or feedstock, as it is known in the biofuels industry. Anything will do as long as it can be broken down into sugars, with the byproduct ideally burnt to produce electricity to run the plant.

The company is not interested in using corn as feedstock, given the much-z problems created by using food crops for fuel, such as the tortilla inflation that recently caused food riots in Mexico City. Instead, different types of agricultural waste will be used according to whatever makes sense for the local climate and economy: wheat straw in California, for example, or woodchips in the South.

Using genetically modified bugs for fermentation is essentially the same as using natural bacteria to produce ethanol, although the energy-intensive final process of distillation is virtually eliminated because the bugs excrete a substance that is almost pump-ready.

....snip....


Besides, he says, there is greater good being served. “I have two children, and climate change is something that they are going to face. The energy crisis is something that they are going to face. We have a collective responsibility to do this.”

Power points

— Google has set up an initiative to develop electricity from cheap renewable energy sources

— Craig Venter, who mapped the human genome, has created a company to create hydrogen and ethanol from genetically engineered bugs

— The US Energy and Agriculture Departments said in 2005 that there was land available to produce enough biomass (nonedible plant parts) to replace 30 per cent of current liquid transport fuels

EPA Chief Grilled on being a White House Puppet

WASHINGTON, DC, May 21, 2008 (ENS) - The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stonewalled Democratic lawmakers Tuesday, refusing to provide information about the role the White House played in recent agency decisions involving the regulation of greenhouse gases and the finalization of a new federal smog standard. The defiance of EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson drew a sharp rebuke from the Democratic chair of the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee, who said the EPA chief has repeatedly bowed to pressure from the White House and become "essentially a figurehead."

"My concern is decisions at EPA are not being made on the science and they are not being made on the law," said committee Chairman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat. "They are being made at the White House and they are being made for political reasons."
Congressman Henry Waxman chairs the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee. (Photo courtesy Office of the Congressman)

Waxman said senior EPA staff had told Congressional investigators that Johnson reversed course on the smog standard, abandoning a plan to set a secondary standard designed to protect natural ecosystems from ground-level ozone, the key ingredient in smog.

The investigation by Waxman's committee found that the president weighed in with his opposition to a secondary ozone standard only hours before EPA finalized the new rule on March 12.

The EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, CASAC, had recommended setting such a standard to better protect natural ecosystems from the hazards of smog. Documents show Johnson initially agreed with that recommendation. The final rule did not set a secondary standard.

Waxman also pointed to depositions from agency staff that said Johnson caved to the White House in deciding to reject California's request to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles.

He criticized the EPA chief for a second global warming decision, pointing to agency documents and testimony that indicate Johnson was prepared to push forward last December with an agency effort to begin exploring how to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, only to abandon the plan due to White House pressure.

"Three times in the last six months you have recommended to the White House that EPA take steps to address climate change and protect the environment," Waxman told Johnson. "In each case, your positions were right on the science and the law but in each case you backed down."

Waxman added that Johnson and other administration officials have failed to fill in gaps about how the process for each of the decisions was completed and questioned the legality of the White House's involvement.

"The president apparently insisted on his judgment and overrode the unanimous recommendations of EPA scientific and legal experts," he said "Our investigation has not been able to find any evidence that the president based his decisions on the science, the record, or the law. Indeed, there's virtually no credible record of any kind in support of the decisions."

snip...

Link to Full Article

UK OKs human-animal embryo research

British authorities have given the go ahead for scientists to use animal embryos in their efforts to make Human Stem Cells. For moi, it isn't a question of whether this will work or whether this will be helpful to people. It is a question of where does it lead? Man, over an over again, proves that he is not capable of acting responsibly with the technology he already possesses, let alone any new technology. As if we are not destroying our ability to endure upon the planet already, what happens when the building blocks of life are f*ck'd with?

We already have genetically modified fruits and vegetables. Many that are overtaking natural species, and many that are designed to die off and not self propagate. We read that cloned meat, from cloned animals who have higher rates of disease and mutations, is in the US food system. Mmm, serve up that steak.

Where is it all leading to?

British authorities on Thursday approved scientists' use of animal eggs to create human stem cells, a ruling that will boost the supply of stem cells for research.

The decision means that researchers will be able to refine their techniques for producing human stem cells by practicing first on animal eggs, of which there is a steady supply. Similar work involving human-animal stem cells is also under way in China and the United States.

"This is good news for research, but most importantly, it is good news for patients," said Sophie Petit-Zeman of the Association of Medical Research Charities.

Scientists have been exploring the use of stem cells to cure many degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's, since the cells have the ability to develop into any cell in the human body.

The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority said it had granted conditional one-year licenses to two institutions to conduct research using mixed human-animal embryos. In Britain, all research involving human eggs and embryos must be approved by the authority.

Scientists from King's College and Newcastle University submitted applications last year to create human stem cells using animal eggs.

Link to Full Article

Embryos created with DNA from 3 people

British scientists say they have created human embryos containing DNA from two women and a man in a procedure that researchers hope might be used one day to produce embryos free of inherited diseases.

Though the preliminary research has raised concerns about the possibility of genetically modified babies, the scientists say that the embryos are still only primarily the product of one man and one woman.

"We are not trying to alter genes, we're just trying to swap a small proportion of the bad ones for some good ones," said Patrick Chinnery, a professor of neurogenetics at Newcastle University involved in the research.

SNIP

The genes being replaced are the mitochondria, a cell's energy source, which are contained outside the nucleus in a normal female egg. Mistakes in the mitochondria's genetic code can result in serious diseases like muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, strokes and mental retardation.

In their research, Chinnery and colleagues used normal embryos created from one man and one woman that had defective mitochondria in the woman's egg. They then transplanted that embryo into an emptied egg donated from a second woman who had healthy mitochondria.

Link to Full Article

Artificial Life Forms?

A scientist is expected to announce early this next week that he has actually created the first artificial life form. By learning the language of our genetic code, now scientists are beginning to write in that code. The result, and never before seen DNA strand that will be transplanted into a bacteria cell which it will then take over.

What follows, if this proves true, is a perpetual model for countless other DNA experiments to easily follow.

Some quotes from the Guardian Unlimited story:

Mr Venter said he had carried out an ethical review before completing the experiment. "We feel that this is good science," he said. He has further heightened the controversy surrounding his potential breakthrough by applying for a patent for the synthetic bacterium.

Pat Mooney, director of a Canadian bioethics organisation, ETC group, said the move was an enormous challenge to society to debate the risks involved. "Governments, and society in general, is way behind the ball. This is a wake-up call - what does it mean to create new life forms in a test-tube?"

He said Mr Venter was creating a "chassis on which you could build almost anything. It could be a contribution to humanity such as new drugs or a huge threat to humanity such as bio-weapons".

Now, let's stop to ponder all the possibilities...

Bah, nobody has ever really thought out the consequences of using any of science we currently have, and that really hasn't harmed us has it? How bad could it be?

Mr Venter believes designer genomes have enormous positive potential if properly regulated. In the long-term, he hopes they could lead to alternative energy sources previously unthinkable. Bacteria could be created, he speculates, that could help mop up excessive carbon dioxide, thus contributing to the solution to global warming, or produce fuels such as butane or propane made entirely from sugar.

"We are not afraid to take on things that are important just because they stimulate thinking," he said. "We are dealing in big ideas. We are trying to create a new value system for life. When dealing at this scale, you can't expect everybody to be happy."

Yeah, see, we are going to get a new value system for life. So, you know, there is that trade off. I mean...what the hell does a 'new value system for life' mean?

The value of life seems to be relative to who is doing the valuing. In a world of questionable ethics and morals of those in the positions to use this new science, or more pointedly profit by it, one has to assume that those that can will. Where do we then, as a nation and as a world, put boundaries? where do we ensure that our values are not compromised in the name of money, power, or any so called quick fixes to the complicated problems that we create for ourselves. Will we use such knowledge for the greater good of all? or will we use it like a new drug to hide our symptoms, to ignore our deeper issues of how we conduct ourselves in relationship to the planet and one another. In a society more and more dependent on solutions in a pill what will the pharmaceutical corporations be selling you?

Chimera Project: Slippery Slope or Breakthrough?

Regulators in Britain have given the 'ok' in theory for researchers to go forth in creating human-animal hybrid embryos to search for cures for serious illnesses.

But here emerges the slippery slope that genetic manipulation of human DNA has opened to us as a species. Today it is research for cures of diseases like parkinson's, but what will it be tomorrow? It isn't hard to project what some might dream of doing because the possibilities may begin to exist.

Here is a link to today's news article: Human-Animal Hybrids

Sci-Fi Writers Join War on Terror

Yes, that's right, now you too can fight terrorism for the homeland by having a doctorate and a penchant for writing and reading.

Full Article Here

Looking to prevent the next terrorist attack, the Homeland Security Department is tapping into the wild imaginations of a group of self-described "deviant" thinkers: science-fiction writers.

"We spend our entire careers living in the future," says author Arlan Andrews, one of a handful of writers the government brought to Washington this month to attend a Homeland Security conference on science and technology.

Those responsible for keeping the nation safe from devastating attacks realize that in addition to border agents, police and airport screeners, they "need people to think of crazy ideas," Andrews says.

The writers make up a group called Sigma, which Andrews put together 15 years ago to advise government officials. The last time the group gathered was in the late 1990s, when members met with government scientists to discuss what a post-nuclear age might look like, says group member Greg Bear. He has written 30 sci-fi books, including the best seller Darwin's Radio.

Now, the Homeland Security Department is calling on the group to help with the government's latest top mission of combating terrorism.

Electric Sports Car Rolls Out

A sports car that can go from 0 to 60 in 4 seconds — and is 100% electric. You have to plug it in for a recharge every 250 miles or so, but it's a small sacrifice for something that gets an equivalent of 135 miles per gallon (conversion of electric energy into gallons of gas gives the mpg amount).

Check it out at Tesla Motors Here

Oh, yeah, 2007 models have already sold out but you can try for 2008. All you need is 100 grand...

More on Science Censure...

Full Article

A former White House official accused of improperly editing reports on global warming defended his editorial changes Monday as reflecting views expressed in a 2001 report by the National Academy of Sciences.

House Democrats said the 181 changes made in three climate reports reflected a consistent attempt to emphasize uncertainties surrounding the science of climate change and undercut the broad conclusions that manmade emissions are warming the earth.

Philip Cooney, former chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, acknowledged at a House hearing that some of the changes he made were "to align these communications with the administration's stated policy" on climate change.

The extent of Cooney's editing of government climate reports first surfaced in 2005. Shortly thereafter, Cooney, a former oil industry lobbyist, left the White House to work at Exxon Mobil Corp.

"My concern is that there was a concerted White House effort to inject uncertainty into the climate debate," said Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the Government Reform Committee in the House of Representatives.

Cooney's appearance before Waxman's committee on Monday marked the first time he has spoken publicly or was extensively questioned about the issue...

More Dimensions Than You Can Shake a Stick At..

Math Geeks Unite and Celebrate!

Full Article

After four years of intensive collaboration, 18 top mathematicians and computer scientists from the United States and Europe have successfully mapped E8, one of the largest and most complicated structures in mathematics, scientists said late Sunday.

Jeffrey Adams, project leader and mathematics professor at the University of Maryland said E8 was discovered over a century ago, in 1887, and until now, no one thought the structure could ever be understood.

"This groundbreaking achievement is significant both as an advance in basic knowledge, as well as a major advance in the use of large scale computing to solve complicated mathematical problems," Adams said.

He added that the mapping of E8 may well have unforeseen implications in mathematics and physics which won't be evident for years to come.

E8 belongs to so-called Lie groups that were invented by a 19th century Norwegian mathematician, Sophus Lie, to study symmetry.

The theory holds that underlying any symmetrical object, such as a sphere, is a Lie group.

Balls, cylinders or cones are familiar examples of symmetric three-dimensional objects.

However, mathematicians study symmetries in higher dimensions. In fact, E8 itself is 248-dimensional.

Dolphins in Texas

Mysterious deaths of Dolphins washing up on Texas shores...

Article Source

The stranding deaths of about 60 bottlenose dolphins on Texas beaches over the past three weeks has puzzled researchers and is a cause for concern during the calving season, a senior scientist said on Monday.

"This is the calving season so we often have strandings at this time of the year. It's tough to be an air-breather born in the water," said Dr. Daniel F. Cowan, professor of pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and director of the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network.

"But over the last few weeks we have had about 3 to 4 times the usual mortality," he told Reuters.

Most of the carcasses were in an advanced state of decomposition, suggesting that they were carried to Texas beaches from areas further off or up the shore.

Suspected causes include parasites, an outbreak of infectious diseases or red tide, an algal bloom prompted by fertilizers or other excess nutrients.

Most of the dolphins have been too decomposed for a necropsy -- the animal version of an autopsy -- and so volunteers have been burying them on the beaches.

Several of the dolphins which have washed up on shore have been young with umbilical cords still attached.

Water On Mars

Full Article

Mars is unlikely to sport beachfront property anytime soon, but the planet has enough water ice at its south pole to blanket the entire planet in more than 30 feet of water if everything thawed out.

With a radar technique, astronomers have penetrated for the first time about 2.5 miles (nearly four kilometers) beneath the south pole's frozen surface. The data showed that nearly pure water ice lies beneath.

Discovered in the early 1970s, layered deposits of ice and dust cap the North and South Poles of Mars. Until now, the deposits have been difficult to study closely with existing telescopes and satellites. The current advance comes from a probe of the deposits using an instrument aboard the Mars Express orbiter.

"This is the first time that a ground-penetrating system has ever been used on Mars," said the new radar study's lead author, Jeffrey Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "All the other instruments used to study the surface of Mars in the past really have only been sensitive to what occurs at the very surface."

(NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft also carries instruments designed, among other things, to probe beneath icy polar surfaces.)

Deep probe

Plaut and his colleagues probed the deposits with radar echo sounding, typically used on Earth to study the interiors of glaciers. The instrument, called the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding, or MARSIS, beams radio waves which penetrate the planet's surface and bounce off features having different electrical properties.

The reflected beams revealed that 90 percent or more of the frozen polar material is pure water ice, sprinkled with dust particles. The scientists calculated that the water would form a 36-foot-deep ocean of sorts if spread over the Martian globe.

$0 Energy Bill

Here is one man making it happen. It has to start somewhere, and trailblazers are necessary to show us (and our government) a blueprint for working towards it.

Full Article

Mike Strizki lives in the nation's first solar-hydrogen house. The technology this civil engineer has been able to string together – solar panels, a hydrogen fuel cell, storage tanks, and a piece of equipment called an electrolyzer – provides electricity to his home year-round, even on the cloudiest of winter days.

Mr. Strizki's monthly utility bill is zero – he's off the power grid – and his system creates no carbon-dioxide emissions. Neither does the fuel-cell car parked in his garage, which runs off the hydrogen his system creates.

It sounds promising, even utopian: homemade, storable energy that doesn't contribute to global warming. But does Strizki's method – converting electricity generated from renewable sources into hydrogen – make sense for widespread adoption?

According to some renewable-energy experts, the answer is "no," at least not anytime soon. The system is too expensive, they say, and the process of creating hydrogen from clean sources is itself laced with inefficiency – the numbers just don't add up.

Strizki's response: "Nothing is as wildly expensive as destroying the whole planet."

Life free from the power gridStrizki lives with his wife in a rural section of Central New Jersey. His 12-acre property is surrounded by trees and his gravel driveway leads to a winding country road. His 3,500-square-foot house has all the amenities, including a hot tub and a big-screen TV.

It was here, four years ago, that Strizki set out to do something that's never been done in this country – power his home completely through a combination of solar and hydrogen. "My motivation was, I saw what fossil fuels were doing to the environment," he says.

Strizki works for a company that installs solar panels. In previous jobs, he's helped integrate hydrogen fuel cells into cars, a boat, a fire truck, and an airplane. His latest project, the one involving his house, is an extension of that expertise.

The Borneo Cloud Leopard

...now genetically proven to be its own species. Let's hope this is a boost to conservation efforts in the heart of Borneo where the WWF have found more than 52 new species.

Toxic Corn?

Mmm, good fer growin' boys and girls...oh, and to make all our cows fat and happy (never mind that cows can't naturally digest corn and need chemical help to do so) Corn Fed Beef! Its whats for dinner....

Anyways, interesting tidbit for the debate over GMO foods.

Article Source

Environmental group Greenpeace launched a fresh attack on genetically modified maize developed by U.S. biotech giant Monsanto, saying on Tuesday that rats fed on one version developed liver and kidney problems.

Greenpeace said a study it had commissioned that was published in the journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Technology showed rats fed for 90 days on Monsanto's MON863 maize showed "signs of toxicity" in the liver and kidneys.

"It is the first time that independent research, published in a peer-reviewed journal, has proved that a GMO authorized for human consumption presents signs of toxicity," Arnaud Apoteker, a spokesman for Greenpeace France said in a statement.

Campaigners against Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) say that genetic modification technology is unproven and potentially dangerous and that GMO crops can contaminate other crops.

The industry says the technology offers vast potential benefits, poses no health risk and has never been shown to contaminate other crops.

"All the experts agree that the maize in question is as safe as traditional maize," Yann Fichet, director external relations for Monsanto France told France's TF1 television.

He said the maize had been authorized in more than 10 countries and in the European Union but he declined to comment specifically on the allegations raised by Greenpeace.

MON863 is a form of maize genetically modified to make it resistant to corn rootworm. It has been authorized by the European Union for use in animal feed since 2005 and for human consumption since January 2006.

Geothermal Power Dissed by Administration

Full Article

The Bush administration wants to eliminate federal support for geothermal power just as many U.S. states are looking to cut greenhouse gas emissions and raise renewable power output.
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The move has angered scientists who say there is enough hot water underground to meet all U.S. electricity needs without greenhouse gas emissions.

"The
Department of Energy has not requested funds for geothermal research in our fiscal-year 2008 budget," said Christina Kielich, a spokeswoman for the Department of Energy. "Geothermal is a mature technology. Our focus is on breakthrough energy research and development."

The administration of George W. Bush has made renewable energy a priority as it seeks to wean the United States off foreign oil, but it emphasizes use of biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel for vehicles and nuclear research for electricity.

"In spite of its enormous potential, the geothermal option for the United States has been largely ignored," a recent study led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said.

Last year, the DOE requested no funding for geothermal for the 2007 fiscal year, after funding averaged about $26 million over the previous six years, but Congress restored $5 million. This year, the DOE's $24.3 billion budget request includes a 38 percent federal spending increase for nuclear power, but nothing for geothermal.

Advocates say they hope Congress can restore at least $25 million in funding to keep geothermal research on track.

"It's too early to pick our resources. We need them all," said Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association.

New geothermal power projects by 2050 could provide 100,000 megawatts of electricity -- enough to power about 80 million U.S. homes, or as much as U.S. nuclear power plants make today, the MIT study said.

But U.S. geothermal development will need $300 million to $400 million over 15 years to make this type of power competitive versus other forms of power generation, the study said.

Plastics Causing Obesity?

Finally, someone comes up with a reason for my flab that I can easily swallow...er, buy, er....never mind...

Full Article

Too many calories and too little exercise are undeniably the major factors contributing to the obesity epidemic, but several recent animal studies suggest that environmental exposure to widely used chemicals may also help make people fat.

The evidence is preliminary, but a number of researchers are pursuing indications that the chemicals, which have been shown to cause abnormal changes in animals' sexual development, can also trigger fat-cell activity -- a process scientists call adipogenesis.

The chemicals under scrutiny are used in products from marine paints and pesticides to food and beverage containers. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found one chemical, bisphenol A, in 95 percent of the people tested, at levels at or above those that affected development in animals.

Gag on Polar Bears, Arctic Ice, and Global Warming..

Some call it SCIENTIFIC CENSORSHIP. Others just call it SOUND POLICY. Whatever you call it, however, government officials and scientists are asked not to speak in any Public Forum on these particular topics.

Heaven forbid that the Public should hear what Scientists and our Government actually think and know on the topics.......we only pay the paychecks!


Full Article Here

Polar bears, sea ice and global warming are taboo subjects, at least in public, for some U.S. scientists attending meetings abroad, environmental groups and a top federal wildlife official said on Thursday.

Environmental activists called this scientific censorship, which they said was in line with the Bush administration's history of muzzling dissent over global climate change.

But H. Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said this policy was a long-standing one, meant to honor international protocols for meetings where the topics of discussion are negotiated in advance.

The matter came to light in e-mails from the Fish and Wildlife Service that were distributed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity, both environmental groups.

Listed as a "new requirement" for foreign travelers on U.S. government business, the memo says that requests for foreign travel "involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice, and/or polar bears" require special handling, including notice of who will be the official spokesman for the trip.

The Fish and Wildlife Service top officials need assurance that the spokesman, "the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears" understands the administration's position on these topics.

Two accompanying memos were offered as examples of these kinds of assurance. Both included the line that the traveler "understands the administration's position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues."

ARE POLAR BEARS 'THREATENED'?

Polar bears are a hot topic for the Bush administration, which decided in December to consider whether to list the white-furred behemoths as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act, because of scientific reports that the bears' icy habitat is melting due to global warming.

Hall said a decision is expected in January 2008. A "threatened" listing would bar the government from taking any action that jeopardizes the animal's existence, and might spur debate about tougher measures to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that spur global warming.

Hall defended the policy laid out in the memos, saying it was meant to keep scientists from straying from a set agenda at meetings in countries like Russia, Norway and Canada.

For example, he said, one meeting was about "human and polar bear interface." Receding Arctic sea ice where polar bears live and the global climate change that likely played a role in the melting were not proper discussion topics, he said.

"That's not a climate change discussion," Hall said at a telephone briefing. "That's a management, on-the-ground type discussion."

The prohibition on talking about these subjects only applies to public, formal situations, Hall said. Private scientific discussions outside the meeting and away from media are permitted and encouraged, he said.

"This administration has a long history of censoring speech and science on global warming," Eben Burnham-Snyder of the Natural Resources Defense Council said by telephone.

"Whenever we see an instance of the Bush administration restricting speech on global warming, it sends up a huge red flag that their commitment to the issue does not reflect their rhetoric," Burnham-Snyder said.