NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

Top 5 Fake Hurricane Sandy Photos

As Hurricane Sandy clobbered the the most populated region of the United States, many people took to social media and the Internet to receive and circulate information about what experts called a 100-year storm.

As is typically the case with natural disasters -- especially in this digital age -- viral photos quickly put a face on the catastrophe. However, it turns out many of the most popular images pinballing around the Internet during the storm were either fake or outdated. Even major media outlets got duped.

Here are the Top 5 fake photos that got passed around the Internet during Sandy's wrath:

1.) Ominous Clouds Looming Over Statue of Liberty (above)

As Gawker pointed out, "everyone from the the New York Times' Jodi Kantor to the New Yorker's David Grann to Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski" tweeted this fake photo of what looks to be a lost still from the movie Independence Day. However, the image was a Photoshop job that combined a photo of the New York harbor with a 2004 image of a Nebraska super cell taken by Mike Hollingshead.

2.) Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (above)

Real photo, wrong day.

NPR tweeted and posted this photo of three soldiers getting pelted with rain as they guarded the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arlington National Cemetery, calling it "perhaps one of the more stunning pictures we've come across today."

But the photo was actually taken in September. NPR later updated their blog, disclosing that the photo was "not taken during Sandy." NPR credited the Old Guard's Twitter account the and following tweet for helping with the correction: "Thanks for posting the pic about @The_Old_Guard, but that is not from today. This one is http://goo.gl/OC5lz."

The Washington Post, the Daily Beast, Talking Points Memo, and other media outlets also posted the photo, followed by later updates and/or corrections. Compliments of the Old Guard's Facebook page, here's a real image of a soldier standing guard during Sandy.

3.) Sinister Clouds Threaten to Swallow Empire State Building (above)

Again, real photo, wrong day. This one was all over Twitter, Facebook and beyond. The original image appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 2011.

4.) Waves Crashing On Statue of Liberty (above)

Another quick and easy Photoshop job. The original is wallpaper from the disaster porn movie The Day After Tomorrow.

5.) Dark Clouds Rolling Over the George Washington Bridge (above)

With its dark, eerie clouds and identifiable NYC landmark, this image has all the right ingredients for a Sandy pic, except for the fact that it's a Getty stock photo from 2009.

via Mashable

Credit: istwitterwrong.tumblr

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Freshwater Ecosystem Lives Off Seawater

Over half of the world's population lives and works within 120 miles from a coastline. Regardless of your views on climate change, it's safe to say that rising sea levels would present nothing short of a catastrophe. 

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In the event that the ivory towers of denial do start to surround with sea water, detractors will be happy to know that Studiomobile won't leave you high and dry.

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Billing themselves as makers of art and technology for architecture and urban research, the firm came up Networking Nature, an ecosystem that lives off seawater and produces fresh drinking water.

Glass tanks anchored near the coast would fill with seawater where a series of solar-powered stills would extract fresh water. Heat produced by small lamps would evaporate the saltwater and convert the condensed steam into fresh water. That water would then be collected in reservoirs near the coast and distributed to those who need it.

Here's how Studiomobile explains it:

However, water is not produced in isolated systems under central control. The new model provides for a large ecological infrastructure as well as small local production units connected to a network able to integrate the production of fresh water and to supply it where needed. It's a Smart Water Network controlled by sensors that read the local lack of water and, through an Arduino board, activate the pumps providing the water where there is a peak of demand. The Smart Water Network will be a layer of the ecological network as well as the Smart Power Grid and the communications network. This strategy not only gives response to the preservation of the environment, but it is also a radically new model that ensures free and democratic access to the resources to everybody.

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Networking Nature was created for the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale.

via Inhabitat

credit: Studiomobile

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Geoengineering Soaring To New Heights

I come from a pasty Norwegian breed. In my younger, devil-may-care years, I used to scoff at wearing sunscreen with the belief that the quickest way to skin cancer a bronzed bod was roasting myself at the beach without a drop of SPF in sight.

Not any more. I've read the reports and even witnessed my dad, who has a similar complexion, receive skin test results that came back malignant. Now I'm a liberal sunscreen applier when I go out. Plus, sunscreen makes you smell like you just came from the beach, and I like that. It's my new cologne.

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In some ways, our planet is of a pasty breed and needs adequate protection from the sun, too. Many scientists say our planet is getting hotter, compliments of us industrious folks who call Earth home.

Here in Missouri, the grass is brown and the leaves on the trees are wilted. The USDA has declared every county in the state as disaster area because of the drought. Just a random old hot-and-dry summer or the consequences of human-induced climate change?

Well, a couple of Harvard engineers aren't waiting around for your opinion. David Keith and James Anderson are preparing to spray thousands of tons of sun-reflecting sulphate aerosols into the sky over Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Why? They believe the particles will reflect the sun's rays back into space and help lower the Earth's temperature.

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They plan to do so by using a balloon flying 80,000 feet above the Fort Sumner. The geoengineering project aims to mimic the effects of volcanoes spewing sulphuric ash into the air.

Keith says the project could be an inexpensive way to slow down climate change, however other scientists warn that his methods could have dire effects on the planet's weather systems and food supplies. Environmentalists fear Keith's method is merely a stopgap that undermines efforts to accurately fight climate change by reducing carbon emissions.

The experiment will take place in a year and see the release of tens or hundreds of kilograms of particles that, besides measuring impacts on ozone chemistry, will also find ways to make the sulphate aerosols the correct size.

"The objective is not to alter the climate, but simply to probe the processes at a micro scale," Keith told the Guardian. "The direct risk is very small.

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However, Pat Mooney, executive director of the technology watchdog ETC Group, begs to differ:

"Impacts include the potential for further damage to the ozone layer, and disruption of rainfall, particularly in tropical and subtropical regions – potentially threatening the food supplies of billions of people. It will do nothing to decrease levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or halt ocean acidification. And solar geoengineering is likely to increase the risk of climate-related international conflict -- given that the modelling to date shows it poses greater risks to the global south."

What say you? Let the balloon fly or pop it with a BB gun before lifts off?

via the Guardian

Credit: NASA/Roger Ressmeyer/CORBIS

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Climate 'Time Machine' Tests Future CO2 Levels

A climate time machine has been erected in Australia. The contraption, comprised of several nine-story-tall frames with pipes that pump carbon dioxide into the air surrounding a forest, is part of an experiment to measure the effect of carbon dioxide on real woodlands -- and get a glimpse of the future.

The four-acre project, called Eucalyptus Free Air Carbon Enrichment (EucFACE), is an experiment run by the University of Western Sydney. Scientists have embarked on it because although carbon dioxide levels planetwide have risen in the past century, it's unclear how much of the CO2 plants can absorb and what will happen as those concentrations rise.

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Current CO2 levels are about 390 ppm; pre-industrial levels of CO2 were about 280 parts per million. Doubling the amount of CO2 in the air generally raises average global temperatures by about 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit). Additionally, recent studies have hinted that the climate may be more sensitive to CO2 levels than anyone thought, so getting a good picture of the effects might be urgent.

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Over the course of several months, the researchers will increase the amount of CO2 from 390 ppm to 550 ppm, the level predicted for later this century. They will then study the trees for the next 10 years to see how (and whether) they adapt to the new CO2 concentrations.

The height of the frames allows instruments to measure what happens at different levels of the forest –- from the canopy to the forest floor.

The study is particularly important for Australia, since the kind of woodland being studied covers a lot of the country and is an important part of Australia's local carbon strategy -- if the amount that the trees take up drops, for instance, then reducing carbon emissions might mean planting different kinds of trees or implementing tougher emissions standards.

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By the end of the ten-year experiment, the scientists should have a better idea of what's in store for Australian forests (and by extension, others as well). And with any luck it might offer insights about what to do if they're adversely affected.

Credit: Hawkesbury Institute For The Environment / University of Western Sydney

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Lasers, GPS Measure Snowfall

Knowing the amount of snow isn't just important to skiers. Scientists and water resource managers need that info too. But measuring snow isn't as easy as just sticking a ruler into the ground into a snowbank. And snow gauges don't always pick up accurate readings in windy weather.

To fix this issue, scientists have turned to devices that use GPS signals and laser pulses to get a more accurate reading of how much snow has fallen in a given region.

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At the National Center for Atmospheric Research, geologist Ethan Gutmann, a postdoctoral fellow, is developing a laser instrument that can measure snow depth over an area the size of a football field. The laser sends light pulses that can read depths to within a half an inch, forming a grid pattern made of 1,000 different points. The result is a 3-D picture of the snow, which shows contours, making it much easier to calculate how much is there. Doing the same thing with snow gauges would be next to impossible.

The big limitation on lasers is that they can't see through anything solid, so if you put them in wooded areas, you need more than one covering the same stretch of ground.

Lasers are great, but if you want to see snow cover over really wide swathes of the country, there's no better vantage point than orbit. That's where GPS comes in. Gutmann and colleague Kristine Larson at the University of Colorado are looking at how GPS sensors can pick up signals that bounce off the ground to measure snow cover. Snow shifts the frequency of the signals in a way that bare soil does not, and that shift tells scientists how deep the snow is.

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While there's the advantage of an existing GPS network, it's still not completely clear how snow density and surface roughness affect the signals, so there is still some work to be done. 

All this may seem like a lot of effort to measure snowfall, but it is important for more than weather forecasting and climatology. Snow depth is a critical factor in assessing avalanche risk, or whether to close airports; thus anything that makes it simpler and cheaper to measure the snow will be welcome -– in addition to meaning that fewer people will have to trudge out with yardsticks.

Via University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

Top Photo: Ethan Gutmann checks out his laser instrument that can measure snow depth.
Credit: UCAR/Carlye Calvin

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SunGlacier Aspires To Deep Freeze The Desert

A giant dune-spanning, solar-powered leaf could turn even the most parched desert outpost into a fertile oasis of ice. 

The concept (and the above image) certainly seems like a scene Salvador Dali would have painted, however, this is no surrealist figment of the imagination. It's an actual project called SunGlacier that Dutch artist, Ap Verheggen, has hatched with Cofely Refrigeration to make the impossible possible.

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Verheggen wants to design a 2,153-square-foot structure covered in solar cells that would power cooling condensers on its under belly.

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Sounds like a hair-brained theory, but in an experiment, Verheggen and his team of engineers produced a 4-inch thick layer of ice on an aluminum slab. They tricked out the inside a shipping container to simulate the same summertime conditions as found in Aswan, Egypt, where the relative humidity is typically 22 percent. To simulate desert winds, they pointed a fan at the aluminum slab.

In the room, they installed a metal cooler connected to a cooling machine outside that pumps cold fluids at a temperature as low as -20 Celsius. It took just a few minutes after the machines were running for a layer of ice to start to grow. The teams says that in order to produce this effect in an actual desert, they would need to build a structure that has 200-square meters of solar panels, which would produce 20-square meters of ice in the shadow.

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SunGlacier is not necessarily meant to be a solution to the world's water shortages. It's more of a statement of innovation, meant to spur others into thinking creatively about tackling climate issues.

"The project demonstrates that in a totally hopeless environment you can still generate hope. The message is that what many call the looming water crisis is not inevitable. There are solutions, and it all depends on human ingenuity. It all depends on us," Verheggen told the New York Times.

So far, the SunGlacier leaf exists only in sketches and artist renderings, but once tests are finished next year, sculpting the enormous structure will get underway.

[Via Inhabitat]

Image: Ap Verheggen

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New UPS Vehicles 1,000 Lbs Lighter

These days fuel efficiency is not far from anyone’s mind. Hybrid Vehicles are becoming more and more popular and companies are finding ways of squeezing more energy out of the existing systems. This is especially the case for shipping and delivery businesses, such as UPS, whose costs are fundamentally linked to transportation.

The company has previously flirted with the idea of hybrid vehicles, but now it has taken a drastic step in a different direction. It announced a new fleet of vehicles called CV-23s that are designed to be 1,000 pounds lighter and 40 percent more fuel efficient than their older models. The dramatic decrease in weight was possible by using composite panels for the body instead of steel. These materials have the advantage of being tougher as well as much lighter than more traditional materials.

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Because of the lower vehicle weight, UPS was also able to use a smaller, 150 horsepower engine to achieve the same performance that was possible with a 200 hp engine on the older P70 steel models. According to Daily Tech, the new CV-23s are expected to “save the company 44,000 gallons of fuel per year and reduce carbon emissions by 457 metric tons per year.”

The only drawback to these impressive changes is that the new vehicles are expected to have 630 cubic feet while the older less efficient vehicles can accommodate about 700 cubic feet. This seems to be a negligible price to pay for the remarkable overhaul. 

Credit: UPS

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Satellites Catch Loggers Red-Handed

Oftentimes it seems like our Big Brother-like society -- with its thousands of satellites swerving overhead, its hundreds of cameras monitoring our actions and its questionable privacy policies on social networking websites -- is way too big. But then, every once in a while, the multi-eyed technological overseer spies a bit of treachery, and we all breathe a sigh of relief that it exists.

Take for instance, the case of the Ayoreo of Paraguay, one of the last groups of indigenous people that live, for the most part, uncontacted by modern people. For the better part of the last decade, loggers and ranchers have been devastating the natural forest in northern Paraguay. According to The Guardian “nearly 10 percent of the virgin, dry forest in northern Paraguay has been cleared.” To make matters worse, this massive deforestation has been happening in the neighborhood of the Ayoreo tribes without their approval or knowledge.

After this tragedy was revealed, a logging moratorium was placed on the land where the Ayoreo live but satellite images from last December obtained by tribal advocacy groups, including Survival International, clearly show that the deforestation is still occurring illegally. Since there does not seem to be much enforcement of the logging regulations on the ground, activists have taken to observing the process through satellite images.

Other efforts using satellite imagery have revealed illegal logging in Madgascar, Brazil, Indonesia ( PDF) and the Congo in Africa, among other places.

The images may help to shine a spotlight on the specific instances of illegal activity, but according to Wired Science, there is currently no systematic tracking of the deforestation within the area in question and the Paraguayan forests continue to be destroyed. The hope is that as satellite-equipped activists continue to call out instances of illegal logging, there will be mounting pressure to fine the companies that are carrying out the illegal deforestation.

Credit: Survival International

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Floating Golf Course Has Underwater Tunnels

Normally those hitting the links try to avoid water hazards, but designers of a new floating golf course are hoping golfers actually want to tee-off surrounded by one.

Plans are already underway to build an 18-hole course 250 miles off the southwest coast of India, among the islands of the Maldives. The course will consist of a series of floating platforms that contain two to three holes each, built by world-renowned floating technology company, Dutch Docklands.

No, you won't have to swim to each platform - they'll be connected to one another and surrounding hotels by clear underwater tunnels, similar to those you'd find at an aquarium. 

Unlike other floating islands and resorts guzzling energy off the coast of Dubai, course developers call their project a "scarless development" which will have a zero carbon footprint on the Maldives ecosystem. To do so, developers are banking on the islands' sunny locale near the equator to generate energy through floating solar blanket fields. Developers will also employ sustainable techniques to desalinate and cool water.

 

Because the Republic of the Maldives' highest point of elevation is only 7.5 feet above sea level, the island nation is expected to be significantly impacted by the rising sea-levels associated with climate change. As such, Maldivian president, Mohamed Nasheed has been a staunch investor and activist for carbon-neutral developments.

In 2009, he pledged the Maldives islands would be carbon neutral within the decade. That same year, to publicize the threat climate change poses on his nation, Nasheed presided over the world's first underwater cabinet meeting where participants donned scuba gear and gathered around a desk on the the sea floor.

Nasheed has also announced that he's looking to purchase new land in other countries to resettle Maldivian refugees potentially affected by climate change. To fund those efforts, the government is looking to further boost revenues from the nation's largest economical contributor: tourism.

Managed by Troon Golf, the $500 million floating golf course project anticipates doing just that: bringing a wealth of ecological tourism and investment to the Maldives. The project is due to be completed by 2015.

Illustrations: Koen Olthuis Waterstudio.NL/Dutch Docklands

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Scour Old Navy Logs for Modern Climate Models

It might be hard to believe, but this page from an old British Royal Navy logbook contains the kind of raw data that climate scientists crave. See the wind, barometric pressure and temperature readings there in the middle of the page? That's exactly the kind of historical data that scientists need to put into their climate modeling software in an effort to get a better grip on what the earth's weather was in the past, why it is the way it is today, and what it might do tomorrow. And now, scientists are asking for your help in unlocking all these potential climate clues.

It's a project called Oldweather.org, and it's a collaboration between Britain's Meteorological Office and the University of Oxford folks behind such other "citizen science" projects as Galaxy Zoo and Moon Zoo. A word of warning: this isn't just a piece of software you download onto your computer. You have to actively go and scour the digitized versions of these old logbooks and record the data online.

Why? Because handwriting recognition software just isn't good enough yet to do it automatically.

Now, why logbooks? Well, they are a treasure trove of information. Every Royal Navy ship was required to keep a daily log, and six times a day -- no matter what was happening -- someone had to note the required weather information. Oxford's Chris Lintott puts it this way: "Every four hours, no matter what else was going on, whether they were in battle, whether they were busy dealing with horrible weather conditions, they would record the temperature, the pressures, and make a note of the weather."

Considering that Royal Navy ships have been doing this for centuries, you can imagine that's a LOT of data. The Old Weather project has started with 280 ships from around the World War I era, but there are logbooks that go back into the 18th and 17th centuries.

Lintott adds that the World War I logs can make for exciting reading. "There are places in the logs where you see, enemy ship sighted, battle engaged and then there’s a pause while they go and read the temperature."

Indeed, naval historians are very interested in this project as well. Gordon Smith, who runs the Naval-history.net website, has already found logbooks for ships on which his grandfather served during the First World War. "To actually find out the day-to-day details of my grandfather's life is just tremendous," he told me.

Of course, it's not all accounts of battles and raging storms.

"Hands cleaning ship," reads one entry above.

More than 300,000 people have signed up to help the Old Weather project already.

(Screenshot: Old Weather)

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