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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (33479)	6/6/2011 1:53:32 PM
From: average joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

unexplained mysteries The ancient Earth should have frozen to death billions of years ago Alasdair Wilkins —The geological evidence suggests that there have been liquid oceans on Earth dating back at least 3.5 billion years, a fact that was crucial to the emergence of the very first lifeforms. The only problem is that that's utterly impossible. Here's the basic problem. In the first billion years or so of the Earth's existence, the Sun would have been considerably dimmer than it is today, perhaps only about 70% of its current brightness. In those days, the Sun wouldn't have given off enough heat to keep liquid water on Earth's surface without it freezing back up. But that's contradicted by ancient rocks that show clear signs of liquid water dating back that far, not to mention the fact that the earliest ancestors of life apparently began to emerge way back then, and they almost certainly would have needed liquid oceans to do that. There are a few possible explanations for this little mystery. The Earth might have had a lower albedo back then, meaning that it reflected less of its heat back towards the Sun. The most obvious way to lower the planet's albedo would be to substantially reduce its cloud cover. Another possibility is that Earth might have suffered from a runaway greenhouse gas effect, a little bit like what we find on Venus today. Either way, the mystery was big enough to warrant this rather impressive title: "The Faint Young Sun Paradox." About a year ago, researchers announced a possible solution to the paradox. They argued that the rocks dating back to that time period showed no evidence of methane or carbon dioxide, two of the most common greenhouse gases. That made the lower albedo theory the clear favorite, and the researchers argued that in the absence of lots of biological particles that would nucleate water droplets, fewer clouds would have formed. Here's the problem though - all the researchers did was provide evidence against the greenhouse effect theory, not offer evidence for the lower albedo theory. Researchers Colin Goldlatt and Kevin Zahnle at NASA's Ames Research Center have now approached the question from the other direction, assessing the logistics of the lower albedo theory. And it really doesn't look good. They discovered that no matter how you arrange the clouds, there's no way that it could have lowered the albedo enough to keep the oceans liquid. According to repeated simulations, the most that Goldlatt and Zahnle could get was about half the necessary heating to keep the water unfrozen. Specifically, since higher clouds trap heat while lower clouds reflect it, they tried a simulation where there were no lower clouds at all, and even so they say that "even with the strongest plausible assumptions, reducing cloud and surface albedos falls short by a factor of two of resolving the paradox." The two best theories to explain why the ancient Earth didn't freeze have now seemingly been disproved. There's no easy way out of this paradox, and we may need an entirely new theory to account for it, because this is one of those times where the theoretical and practical evidence seem hellbent on disagreement. arXiv via Technology Review. io9.com

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (33479)	6/6/2011 2:18:10 PM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 36917

Green Nazis.

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (33479)	6/7/2011 10:25:56 AM
From: average joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

Accused Witches Challenge Century-Old Sorcery Law June 6, 2011 11:28 am In Malawi, South Africa, sorcery is afoot. At least, that’s what the police are being told, and with over fifty accused witches serving sentences of up to 6 years for the practice of strange magicks, there’s something odd going on. Critics are calling it ageism. The problems for 82 year old Kanthukako Supaunyolo began when her grandson woke up one morning with a nosebleed. Fearing a hex was placed on the family, her own children sussed her out as a sorcerer and called the police, landing her in jail for violating a hundred year old law originally created to quell the spread of witchcraft. “How could I bewitch my own grandchild. For what?”, Supaunyolo told reporters. “We suffered this injustice because we are poor and old. I blame the police who are overzealous in arresting innocent people and charging them with witchcraft, which cannot be proved in a court of law.” “In Malawi, people hate old people,” Liness Nkhukuyalira, a previously jailed accused, told the AFP. “They think everybody who is old must be a witch.” Luckily, there is a human rights group looking out for the unfortunate few who are accused of practicing sorcery. The ASH, or Association for Secular Humanism, headed by activist George Thindwa, was founded last year to fight abuses against alleged witches. After the ASH paid her fine of 33 dollars, a fortune for many Malawians who live on less than two dollars a day, Supaunyolo was released with her friends Liness Nkhukuyalira, 72, and Nurse Nthala, 62, also accused of witchcraft under the antiquated law. “Of late there have been increasing cases of people being arrested and convicted based on accusations that they are practicing witchcraft,” Thinda told reporters. “We want to secure the release of those labelled as witches because they are 100 percent innocent.” Creating the problems in question, is a law created in 1911, a holdover from the British colonial period, that makes it illegal for anyone to practice witchcraft. Unfortunately, as has always been the case with regulations such as this, it is a law often enacted by angry neighbors, jealous lovers, or even those not fond of the elderly, in order to have victims arrested, and if they are unable to pay their fines, jailed. Last week, the ASH helped Namakhalepo Kamphata, an 83 year old woman accused of sorcery by her nephew, with food and cash donations after serving a 3 year prison sentence, the longest anyone has spent behind bars for witchcraft in Malawi. The recent criticisms and abuse of the outdated law have led to an inquiry by the state-funded Law Commission, which has promised to review the law, saying it should “safeguard the rights of victims, especially women and children who are often the victims of witchcraft allegations, regardless of whether witchcraft exists or not. whofortedblog.com