Author, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil famously and accurately predicted that a computer would beat a man at chess by 1998, that technologies that help spread information would accelerate the collapse of the Soviet Union, and that a worldwide communications network would emerge in the mid 1990s (i.e. the Internet).

Most of Kurzweil's prognostications are derived from his law of accelerating returns—the idea that information technologies progress exponentially, in part because each iteration is used to help build the next, better, faster, cheaper one. In the case of computers, this is not just a theory but an observable trend—computer processing power has doubled every two years for nearly half a century.

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This post first appeared on the Guardian website.

Three large energy companies have been carrying out covert intelligence-gathering operations on environmental activists, the Guardian can reveal.

The energy giant E.ON, Britain's second-biggest coal producer Scottish Resources Group, and Scottish Power, one of the UK's largest electricity-generators, have been paying for the services of a private security firm that has been secretly monitoring activists.

Leaked documents show how the security firm's owner, Rebecca Todd, tipped off company executives about environmentalists' plans after snooping on their emails. She is also shown instructing an agent to attend campaign meetings and coaching him on how to ingratiate himself with activists. The disclosures come as police chiefs, on the defensive over damaging revelations of undercover police officers in the protest movement, privately claim that there are more corporate spies in protest groups than undercover police officers.

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If last week's version of the GOP's temporary government-funding bill took a scalpel to the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency, the new version trims it with something more akin to a chainsaw.

The latest version of the seven-month spending plan (called a "continuing resolution," or a "CR" in Washington-speak) from House Republicans would hack $3 billion from the agency's budget—a 29 percent cut from 2010 levels and nearly twice the proposed cuts in the original plan. It would specifically bar the agency from using funds for the development and implementation of greenhouse gas regulations, and would cut funding for the EPA's Global Change program, which conducts research on climate change, by a third.

The new CR would also block the White House from filling the energy and climate adviser post that Carol Browner is vacating. (See ClimateWire for more on the specific cuts).

The National Wildlife Federation says the cuts amount to a "sneak attack" on existing environmental laws like the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, because they would make it basically impossible for the EPA to do its job. The huge cut—the biggest in 30 years—"would jeopardize the water we drink and air we breathe, endangering the health and well-being of all Americans," Gene Karpinski, the president of the League of Conservation Voters, said Monday.

The GOP plan also includes major cuts to climate and renewable energy programs at the Department of Energy and the Department of Interior, as well as public transportation. Climate programs at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would also take a big hit. And it includes major reductions to international climate and environment programs—including a $500 million cut in funds that go to the World Bank for projects to cut emissions in developing countries and a two-thirds reduction in the funds the US contributes to the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

The full list of cuts is here, and the legislation is here.

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This week, I'm reporting from outside Savannah, Georgia, on my first-ever hunting trip. We're after invasive feral pigs, which have proliferated over the last decade in much of the southeastern US, competing with native species for food and wreaking havoc on land with their rooting. I'm hanging out with Jackson Landers, who aims to whet American appetites for invasive species like hogs, lionfish, geese, deer, and even spiny iguanas by working with wholesalers, chefs, and restaurateurs to promote these aliens as menu items. Read "Feral Pig Diaries Day 1: Moonshine and Teen Swine" here, and "Feral Pig Diaries Day 2: Do Hogs Like Supermarket Danishes?" here. My introductory post (wherein MoJo takes a field trip to the shooting range) is here. A word to the squeamish: The Feral Pig Diaries do contain a few graphic images.

After having seen zero pigs (well, except a dead one) during the first few days of my Feral Pig Diaries project, I couldn't wait to get to Ossabaw, a mostly uninhabited island, 20 miles off the coast of Savannah, with a major hog problem. Ossabaw's 26,000 acres of dense forest, salt marshes, and sand beaches is usually closed to the public, but the Georgia Department of Natural Resources was nice enough to arrange a trip out so I could see the pigs and the trouble they've caused firsthand.

My friend Caroline and I set out early from her parents' place, just outside Beaufort, South Carolina, and met David Mixon and Ed Van Otteren, both biologists from the DNR, in a supermarket parking lot. We followed them to this dock, hidden away at the end of a winding drive in the tiny coastal community of Pin Point, Georgia (birthplace of Clarence Thomas!).

We made the 20-minute trip to the island in this little boat, threading our way between barrier islands, where the Ogeechee River empties out into the ocean.

The day was cold and damp, but we hardly noticed since we were busy gawking at the birds: cormorants, horned grebes, bufflehead ducks, and a whole mess of scaups overhead that changed direction with the wind every few seconds. Especially cool was a bald eagle perched on top of a pole on a marshy island (left.)

Also cool was the driver of our boat, DNR wildlife technician Andy Meadows (right), who has lived on Ossabaw for 11 years. His only (human) neighbors are a few other DNR staffers (including a full-time hog shooter) and 98-year-old Eleanor Torrey West, the only remaining member of the family from which the DNR purchased the island. "Miss West," as she's known, lives in a mansion on the island's north shore, where she keeps a pet hog named Paul Mitchell, named (I kid you not) after the hair products guy because it has a cowlick.

I asked Andy if there was a good chance we'd see a hog, and he assured me that he sees them every day. Although pigs were first introduced to the island in the 1500s by Spanish settlers, Ossabaw's current hog population is the result of centuries of mixing with domestic pigs. Ossabaw wasn't always uninhabited; it was farmed till quite recently. At one point before the Civil War, the island held four cotton plantations and 1,200 slaves. 

Once docked at the island, we climbed into a truck with Andy, and David and Ed followed in another truck behind us. From a narrow causeway, we saw a marsh full of bird action: great blue herons, snowy egrets, wood storks, wood ducks, oystercatchers, and one little pied-billed grebe who was making a racket. After the jump: a gory-ish image (but it's not too bad).

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