Monitoring Pollution

Gore's global warming movie

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While "The Da Vinci Code" overshadowed most movie screenings in Cannes, rising from the publicity ashes is the unlikely star Al Gore, who has been making the rounds promoting a global warming documentary called "An Inconvenient Truth."

In a review published today in the New York Times , movie reviewer A.O. Scott points out that this is not, however, the Al Gore Show:

"But as I said, the movie is not about him. He is, rather, the surprisingly engaging vehicle for some very disturbing information. His explanations of complex environmental phenomena — the jet stream has always been a particularly tough one for me to grasp — are clear, and while some of the visual aids are a little corny, most of the images are stark, illuminating and powerful."

The film is being touted for its clear descriptions of complicated subjects, and has been receiving rave reviews about being an engaging and sometimes even humorous look at the future of global warming.

The film opens today in New York and Los Angeles.

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The burp to end all burps

Dave Burdick

Okay, I don't have a copy of the text and I don't have a login for TimesSelect -- then how, you ask did I get this information? {mosimage}I have my sources/mother... -- but there's a New York Times op-ed today about the theory of the "methane burp," or as the headline puts it, "The Big Burp Theory of the Apocalypse."

Very flashy. Can't wait for the movie.

"Snakes on a Plane II: Burps at the Apocalypse."

At any rate, the idea is that under the sea (under the sea!), there is a store of methane that's waiting for warmer climes to bubble up and then, you know, make all of the oceans boil like giant seafood-frying... oceans. The beginning of the column looks like this:

"Since President Bush is complacent about conventional risks from climate change, let's try fear-mongering."

Some preview that is! At least we know it's about fear-mongering and burping, right?

If you've got TimesSelect, check it out here.

For those of us without, here's the general idea of methane burps as extracted from an AP story that ran on CNN.com a-way back in 2000:

"Huge reservoirs of methane trapped beneath the ocean floor rapidly escaped during prehistoric global warming and depleted much of the sea's oxygen, according to new research into why many forms of life suddenly vanished 183 million years ago."

And:

"Methane hydrate is formed beneath the sea floor when algae from the surface dies and sinks. Normally a gas, the methane is locked in an ice-like state but is susceptible to changes in pressure and temperature."

So that's exciting. If that's not enough, check out this explanation from the UK's Environment Agency.

Via NYT. And Mom.

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Spy Pigeons in the Sky

Dave Burdick

{mosimage}H.G. posted about robotic fish that could eventually be used to monitor the environment with cameras and meters. We might be even closer, though, to using cyborg blog pigeons to monitor air pollution.

Okay, maybe they're not cyborgs so much as they are pigeons with naked network cards strapped to them. But the idea of sending 20 pigeons into the air above and around San Jose, Calif., each bearing GPS receivers, smog detectors and cell phones for texting back their findings is still futuristic in a very unique way: this is the first piece of technology that I'm aware of that may actually defecate on our heads.

If these pigeons spread to other states, I hope somebody makes a GoogleMaps plug-in so we can keep an eye on where these pigeons hang out and avoid the area entirely.

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Just in Case all the Real Fish Die

Hank Green

{mosimage}Ryomei Engineering, part of Mitsubishi, has created a robotic fish that will, no doubt, repopulate the oceans after that apocalypse we keep hearing about. Seriously though, the thing actually does serve a purpose. It swims around, samples water quality and takes pictures. If they mix that in with a satalite uplink, some pretty powerful AI and a GPS, and we're on our way to a robot that can keep us more informed on the state of the world's oceans.

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Gore's global warming movie

The burp to end all burps

Spy Pigeons in the Sky

Just in Case all the Real Fish Die

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