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A Question of SemanticsIn “The Semantic Web in Action,” Lee Feigenbaum, Ivan Herman, Tonya Hongsermeier, Eric Neumann and Susie Stephens describe the development of the Semantic Web, a set of formats and languages to find and analyze data on the World Wide Web easily. The problem with this system is that different people will not agree on exactly how to define all concepts. Any computer application that tries to standardize its ontology will necessarily distort what at least some people are trying to express.

The 19th-century creators of neoclassical economics--the theory that now serves as the basis for coordinating activities in the global market system--are credited with transforming their field into a scientific discipline. But what is not widely known is that these now legendary economists--William Stanley Jevons, Léon Walras, Maria Edgeworth and Vilfredo Pareto--developed their theories by adapting equations from 19th-century physics that eventually became obsolete. Unfortunately, it is clear that neoclassical economics has also become outdated. The theory is based on unscientific assumptions that are hindering the implementation of viable economic solutions for global warming and other menacing environmental problems.

The physical theory that the creators of neoclassical economics used as a template was conceived in response to the inability of Newtonian physics to account for the phenomena of heat, light and electricity. In 1847 German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz formulated the conservation of energy principle and postulated the existence of a field of conserved energy that fills all space and unifies these phenomena. Later in the century James Maxwell, Ludwig Boltzmann and other physicists devised better explanations for electromagnetism and thermodynamics, but in the meantime, the economists had borrowed and altered Helmholtz’s equations.

Joshua Wurman, president of the Center for Severe Weather Research in Boulder, Colo., whips up a response. [More]

For more than half a century, the La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica has provided researchers with the data needed to study everything from local amphibian and reptile populations to global warming. To meet a growing demand for La Selva's treasure trove of biological and environmental data, the main facilities are getting a $785,000 high-tech makeover that includes wireless access to measurement systems that collect and transmit data and provide a dynamic 3-D analysis of the rainforest canopy. [More]

Astronomers report they have detected methane for the first time in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system. The finding comes from extrasolar planet HD 189733 b, a gaseous "hot Jupiter" locked in a tight orbit around a star 63 light-years away.

The observations "decisively show that methane is present in addition to water," writes the research team from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and University College London. Members of the same team reported last year that they had identified water vapor in the atmosphere of HD 189733 b.

AFP - The world's first cargo ship partly propelled by solar power is set to take to the seas later this year in a joint project between two Japanese companies, an official said Wednesday.

AP - Talks on a new global warming agreement have begun to resolve some major sticking points, the U.N. climate chief said Wednesday, sounding a promising note after months of sluggish negotiations often marked by confrontation among industrial and developing countries.

A new device may take the sitting around out of bird-watching

ORNITHOLOGY is one of the few branches of science to which amateurs still make an important contribution. One reason is that there are lots of bird-watchers around to collect the screeds of distribution and habitat data that the science of ecology relies on. And one reason that there are so many bird-watchers (as opposed to, say, mammal-watchers) is that birds tend to advertise their presence in a way that most animals do not. Many have showy plumage, and many (not always the same ones) have mellifluous songs—meaning that a lot of bird-watching is actually bird-listening.

Neither bird-watchers nor bird-listeners can be around all the time, however, so to make the process more systematic Daniel Wolff of the University of Bonn is trying to build a bird-song-recognition system that can sit in a piece of habitat and listen for the calls of particular species until its power runs out. And it seems to work. He recently conducted a trial of the system in an area of lakes to the north-east of Berlin, where it looked for Savi’s warbler, a small and rare bird that loves reed beds and sounds rather like a cricket, and also for a more common species, the chaffinch. ...

What constitutes sustainability?

IT’S official: extracting oil from Canada’s vast deposits of bitumenous sand is unsustainable. So, at any rate, Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) implicitly concluded when it ruled that Royal Dutch Shell was misleading the public by describing its tar-sands operation as “sustainable”.

WWF, the environmental NGO that lodged the complaint with the ASA, dislikes the tar sands (or oil sands, as Shell prefers to call them) because turning them into fuel consumes much more energy than refining crude oil does. If that energy is made by burning natural gas—as it is in all tar-sands projects at the moment—and so involves extra emissions of greenhouse gases, then the resulting fuel is two or three times as bad for the atmosphere as normal petrol or diesel. That is no good for the world’s climate, and so, in WWF’s view, unsustainable. ...

Everyone knows industry needs oil. Now people are worrying about water, too

“WATER is the oil of the 21st century,” declares Andrew Liveris, the chief executive of Dow, a chemical company. Like oil, water is a critical lubricant of the global economy. And as with oil, supplies of water—at least, the clean, easily accessible sort—are coming under enormous strain because of the growing global population and an emerging middle-class in Asia that hankers for the water-intensive life enjoyed by people in the West.

Oil prices have fallen from their recent peaks, but concerns about the availability of freshwater show no sign of abating. Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, estimates that global water consumption is doubling every 20 years, which it calls an “unsustainable” rate of growth. Water, unlike oil, has no substitute. Climate change is altering the patterns of freshwater availability in complex ways that can lead to more frequent and severe droughts. ...

Wastewater irrigation is better than you think

NORMALLY, news about the environment can be pigeonholed into one of two categories: a big one, labelled “Bad” and a smaller one, with a heading along the lines of “Encouraging” or at least “Not Quite as Bad as You Thought”. But your correspondent has no idea where to file a report on the use of wastewater in agriculture released this week by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), a research centre.

The report looks at 53 cities in the developing world, to see to what extent local farmers water their crops with untreated sewage or industrial effluent, either directly or through contaminated local water sources. The results are striking. In more than two-thirds of the cities, over half the agricultural land is irrigated with wastewater—400,000 hectares (988,000 acres), all told. The study estimates that some 20m hectares around the world are watered in this way. ...

A young multinational mining giant gets a taste of multinational criticism

ONCE a princely game reserve, the Niyamgiri hills (pictured) in Orissa, one of India’s poorest states, are now known for a richer quarry: bauxite, from which aluminium is made. On August 8th, after a 22-month delay, India’s Supreme Court gave the Indian arm of Vedanta Resources, a metals and minerals giant, permission to mine the ore, which will feed the firm’s alumina refinery nearby. The decision was condemned by international campaigning groups which say the project will rob tribal people of their way of life. As Vedanta has found, these groups can mine a controversy with the same determination as the firm can mine a hilltop.

Vedanta has its roots in India, where its founder was born and raised and where most of its operations remain. But it has turned itself into a global company, listed on the London Stock Exchange, with a spot in the FTSE 100 index. Its new reach allows it to tap investors in one part of the world and mineral deposits in another. But it also exposes it to critics from Orissa to Oslo. ...

Britain's booming carbon offset industry is riddled with inconsistencies and clashes of interest that have caused a "crisis of legitimacy" which threatens to dissuade consumers from contributing to cutting their greenhouse gas emissions, leading academics claim today.

Climate negotiators have made unexpected headway towards a new international treaty to combat global warming, easing a logjam that has held up progress for years.

Two Britons are preparing an attempt to smash the world speed record for a wind-powered vehicle.

Nick Clegg will today unveil plans to make Britain an exporter of green energy by 2050, as he called for a programme "on the scale of the Apollo moon landings" to transform Britain's dependence on foreign oil, gas and coal supplies.

Google is investing $10 million to produce electricity from underground heat with a breakthrough technology, as the web search leader extends its clout to clean up the environment.