Letters to the Editor
rhenley
Published Letters: 34 Editor's Choice: 5
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And then there are the bear farms,
[Read the article: An Olympic disgrace]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Where they farm caged moon bears for bile. So some humans can live long and prosper:
http://www.animalsasia.org/
There's not too much difference between that and their use of the dogs. Other than - the bears are allowed to live until they become unproductive in their cages.
Despite great, sensitive philosophical traditions passed down over thousands of years, one may find that the Chinese civilization as a whole was never really overly concerned about their use of the environment.
To read more about that, this poetic survey of 5,000 years of Chinese environmental history is a good place to start:
The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China by: Mark Elvin
And then, contrast that sad state with the depth of human and worldly knowledge covered in say Bill Porter's book: 'Road to Heaven: Encounters With Chinese Hermits' and the more recent film on the same topic:
Amongst White Clouds http://www.amongstclouds.com
So knowing all that, I guess if we are going to be doing more business with them, at least we should come prepared to sit at their tables. And acknowledge their help assisting the current administration in subsidizing our fake wars by floating us the funds.
Or possibly not, as the case may be:
http://www.boycottmadeinchina.org/
But we would have to give up our cute cheap toys in the process.
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Late to the party again, Farhad
[Read the article: For news on Tibet, turn to Boing Boing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]!
Even the NYT reworked their (BB's) coverage in an article last week.
However the one image that I don't think I've seen on BoingBoing is this one; just to put into perspective what's on going:
Sites of Tibetan Demonstrations and Protests as of March 21st
http://www.savetibet.org/images/news/protestsmap2008.jpg
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lose footing ?
[Read the article: Seduced by the Dalai Lama]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Louis,
Someday you may see using your judeo-christian glasses the vision Mr Iyer was attempting to paint.
While it's possible Iyer missed the mark, that is no reason to paint over it using the tire tracks of a tank for your brush.
Even if it is the contemporary spirit of our days, what works for you should best be kept to yourself.
And not inflicted on the rest of us; leaving the emptiness of your words for us wade through. While wondering in that journey about Mr Iyer's too.
I hope you manage to find a deeper voice before you exit the stage in the dark.
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Another Salon drive by shooting,
[Read the article: Bye-bye, Antarctica?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Gee Andrew,
I don't know why you don't look at the original reports and articles in Science and Nature first before pushing these Exxon blog drifts on us.
For instance I thought these recent Science notes are of more substantive interest:
Science 18 January 2008:
Vol. 319. no. 5861, p. 259
DOI: 10.1126/science.319.5861.259d
Editors' Choice: Highlights of the recent literature
CLIMATE SCIENCE: Whither Antarctic Ice?
Determining how much the Antararctic ice sheet may contribute to sea-level rise through global warming depends on an accurate and precise understanding of the mass balance of two broadly defined regions: the coast and the interior.
Essentially, the coasts appear to be losing mass while the interior is closer to being in balance, but considerable uncertainty remains in current estimates of mass change for the ice sheet as a whole.
In order to better constrain the coastal element of the problem, Rignot et al. have analyzed satellite interferometric synthetic-aperture radar observations of Antarctica's coastline from 1992 to 2006 to estimate ice flux to the oceans.
These measurements, which cover 85% of the coast, show that although East Antarctica probably is not losing mass, widespread losses in West Antarctica totaling 132 ± 60 Gt occurred in 2006, and that ice losses that year at the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula amounted to 60 ± 46 Gt.
Ice mass loss from the coasts increased by 75% over the period of the study.
These results highlight the importance of changes in glacier dynamics, which are so poorly understood that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could not include them in projections of sea-level rise in its 2007 report.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/319/5861/259d
Science 11 January 2008:
Vol. 319. no. 5860, p. 153
DOI: 10.1126/science.319.5860.153b
News Focus: AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION MEETING:
Climate Tipping Points Come In From the Cold by Richard A. Kerr
AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION, 10-14 DECEMBER 2007, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/319/5860/153b?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&andorexacttitle=or&andorexacttitleabs=or&fulltext=Antarctica&andorexactfulltext=or&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=10&sortspec=relevance&fdate=1/1/2008&tdate=3/31/2008&resourcetype=HWCIT
Unfortunately for you I suppose, it's a subscription site unlike Salon's open advert access.
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Actually -- Citizen_X,
[Read the article: Bye-bye, Antarctica?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think you are not quite correct in this statement:
The Antarctic Peninsula used to be a volcanic arc, but went inactive over 3 million years ago. The Shetland Islands comprise the still-active section.
-- Citizen_X
This article in Science a few years ago:
Originally published in Science Express on 9 June 2005
Science 15 July 2005:
Vol. 309. no. 5733, pp. 464 - 467
DOI: 10.1126/science.1106888
Reports
Heat Flux Anomalies in Antarctica Revealed by Satellite Magnetic Data
Cathrine Fox Maule,1* Michael E. Purucker,2 Nils Olsen,1 Klaus Mosegaard1
States this:
We found that the heat flux underneath the ice sheet varies from 40 to 185 megawatts per square meter and that areas of high heat flux coincide with known current volcanism and some areas known to have ice streams.
...
D) Geothermal heat flux. The pink dots mark known volcanoes and coincide with areas of elevated heat flux, especially around Victoria Land. Areas of high heat flux are found close to the shoulder of the West Antarctic rift system (17). Because the heat flux model is valid only in continental areas, we have no results underneath Ronne Ice Shelf.
That [D] image is located here:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol309/issue5733/images/large/309_464_F1.jpeg
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@ Alkaline
[Read the article: Bye-bye, Antarctica?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What part of that image isn't clear ?
Having trouble seeing the word 'volcanism' in the post ?
I use a windows pc so yes, anything is possible with a cut and paste operation - you never really know who buggers the prose using Windows Vista.
But hopefully you can see the image which visually states the same thing.
Are you sure you transcribed that correctly?
-- Alkaline
And since the article didn't receive any negative press I'll have to just assume that it's reasonably accurate.