Home/Archive for March, 2010
Archive for March, 2010
Climate & Change, Nature, Mar 31st, 2010,
Greenpeace has contended with quite the number of household names so far this year, including social networking giant Facebook and the more recent campaign against Nestlé’s. Now, the fight turns against one particular US company based mainly around oil and chemical interests: Koch Industries. If you’ve never heard of them before, don’t feel bad—they intentionally try to stay out of the public eye, but that’s all about to change. According to Greenpeace, Koch Industries has been fueling anti-climate change campaigns with millions of dollars; especially when it comes to discrediting climate science. The report mentions nearly 25 million dollars funded…
Tags: anti-climate change, campaign, climate change, global warming, Greenpeace, Koch Industries, report
Science & Technology, Weird & Wonderful, Wildlife & Flora, ,
Dogs, rodents, fish and snakes have been observed reacting to earthquakes, sometimes several days before they occur. Now we can add toads to the list of animals that can ‘predict’ seismic activity. A British study on toads in Italy shows strong evidence that the amphibians can detect earthquakes days before they happen. According to a report from BBC News, toads that were being studied in L’Aquila, Italy last year produced no spawn during an earthquake period, which begins at the main shock and continues to the last aftershock. What’s even more remarkable is that the toads fled the earthquake area…
Tags: animal, earthquake, earthquakes, Grant, Italy, Journal of Zoology, L'Aquila, quake, report, seismic, toads
Science & Technology, Sustainable living, ,
What, you mean you haven’t been breathless with anticipation regarding the large-scale storage of renewable energy from wind and solar power? Well get with the program. Presidio, a small town on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico, is also on the frontier of energy storage technology. Life in Presidio, Texas is harsh, isolated, hot and stormy. So why would anyone live there? Well, I don’t have the answer to that, but those who do reside in Presidio endure some of the hottest temperatures in the United States as well as frequent electrical storms, which tend to disrupt the…
Tags: battery, electricity, energy, japan, power, Presidio, renewable, Sodium-sulfur, Solar, storage, technology, Texas, wind
Nature, Sustainable living, sustainable living, ,
When you think of a tropical paradise, you might think of the Caribbean, palm trees, crystal blue water, and so forth. However, when a tropical island is facing a water shortage crisis, it can quickly lose all paradise appeal. Trinidad and Tobago is facing that very situation now. According to WASA (the Water and Sewerage Authority) the nation’s water supply won’t last until the end of the dry season (in June) if islanders keep at their current rate of water consumption. Even with water restrictions in place, water levels are still on the decline. How bad is it? Well, the…
Tags: drought, dry season, limited water supply, Trinidad and Tobago, WASA, water crisis, water shortage
Business, Sustainable living, Mar 30th, 2010,
The US Postal Service may have television commercials that boast about their flat rate shipping services, but FedEx has one-upped them in terms of sustainability. This June, FedEx will become the first US delivery service to introduce electric trucks to their fleet. Four EVs will be added to the Los Angeles fleet, though FedEx is no stranger to vehicles powered by alternative-energy sources—they already have 1,800 other such vehicles around the world. FedEx also plans to make electric charging stations available (eventually). These stations will be powered by solar arrays. In the mean time, they’ve also been putting hybrid vehicles…
Tags: all-electric trucks, delivery service, FedEx, hybrid trucks, US fleet
Videos & Documentaries, Weird & Wonderful, Wildlife & Flora, ,
Stranded Magellanic Penguins occasionally wash up on the beaches of Brazil or are found at sea by local fishermen. According to the president of the Niteroi Zoo near Rio de Janeiro, the zoo has been receiving stray penguins since 1999, at first only around two or three per year. But the numbers soon climbed: to around 100 penguins in 2004 and nearly 700 in 2008. Magellanic Penguins commonly migrate north from Antarctica and Patagonia in search of fish, but for unknown reasons they are increasingly getting lost or sick and ending up in Brazil. Hundreds are being found dead on…
Tags: beach, beaches, Brazil, CNN, ipanema, lost, Magellanic, penguins, rio, zoo
Climate & Change, Politics, Sustainable living, ,
India is a country of over one billion inhabitants and already the fourth largest emitter of CO2. While India’s per capita emissions are still low, the South Asian powerhouse has a projected annual economic growth rate of 8-9%. This means a growing middle class and a concomitant demand for the hallmarks of affluent society, such as cars, televisions and other high-energy lifestyle products. Besides the obvious rises in greenhouse gas emissions and industrial pollution that go hand in hand with this kind of development, there is another looming problem: fossil fuels are running out. In order to meet the energy…
Tags: carbon, coal, development, economic, emissions, energy, growth, India, low, Parikh, Solar, strategy
Climate & Change, Science & Technology, Sustainable living, ,
Do you live in Europe? If you do, I have a bit of good news for you. PricewaterhouseCoopers announced that all of Europe’s electricity needs may come completely from renewable energy sources by 2050. According to the report, the goal is to create a “super-smart” grid. This grid will be powered by solar farms in North Africa, wind farms in Northern Europe (including the North Sea) and hydro-electric power from the Alps and Scandinavia. That kind of grid would make carbon-based electricity fuels obsolete and it doesn’t even need any nuclear energy to make it work. Right now, approximately 50%…
Tags: Europe, PricewaterhouseCoopers, PWC, renewable energy, super-smart grid
Nature, Wildlife & Flora, ,
Lake Baikal: the world’s oldest lake (over 25 million years old), the most voluminous freshwater lake, and contains roughly 20% of the world’s total fresh surface water. Over 1,000 species of plants and more than 1,500 types of animals call this lake their home. It’s also the reason behind a recent environmental protest that happened in Moscow. There is a particular cellulose factory located on the shores of Lake Baikal in Siberia. This factory was closed in 2008, but earlier this year, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin gave the okay to reopen the factory. Russian billionaire, Oleg Deripaska, controlled the factory…
Tags: cellulose factor, Greenpeace, Lake Baikal, Moscow, petition, protest, Russia
Nature, Science & Technology, Wildlife & Flora, Mar 29th, 2010,
Whales are hunted and killed every year. We all know this. What we don’t know is what’s been causing the largest whale die-off ever recorded. Over the past 5 years, at least 308 dead Right Whales (an endangered species) have been found along Argentina’s Patagonian coast. All of the carcasses were found throughout Peninsula Valdes waters and most of them (90%) were of whale calves no more than 3 months old. These calf deaths account for nearly 1/3 of all Right Whale calf sightings since 2005. Why there are so many calf deaths, no one knows. All scientists have to…
Tags: Argentina, calves, IWC, mysterious whale die-off, Peninsula Valdes, right whales
Climate & Change, Science & Technology, ,
A NASA physical oceanographer has found no slow down in the giant ocean currents that bring warm water from the tropical Pacific to the North Atlantic. These currents, which function like a ‘conveyor belt’ driven by ocean salinity, make much of Europe far more habitable than it would be without the constant influx of warm water. The observation that these currents are not slowing and probably have not slowed since the early 90s is good news for warm-current dependent regions like the UK. These latest findings, which draw on data from drifting sensors and satellites, support other recent evidence downplaying…
Tags: climate, conveyor, current, currents, Europe, ice, NASA, ocean, warming
Climate & Change, Nature, Science & Technology, ,
A new report, which will become available today in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, argues that human activity has affected the planet in such consequential and lasting ways that a new geological age should be declared: the Anthropocene. Officially the planet is still in the Holocene age, an interglacial period within the current ice age, which includes the entire span of human civilization up to the present time. The Holocene began some 12,000 years ago. From an article in the Toronto Star: Scientists behind the report say that in just two centuries, humans have wrought such vast and unprecedented…
Tags: age, Anthropocene, Environmental Science & Technology, era, geological, Holocene, human, planet, scientists
Science & Technology, Wildlife & Flora, ,
Did you know that soil emits carbon dioxide? Not only does it emit CO2, but the analysis of 439 studies show that the emissions have increased over the last few decades. The study was conducted by terrestrial carbon research scientists, Allison Thomson and Ben Bond-Lamberty. They took 1,434 data points from nearly 50 years of soil-emissions data collected from over 400 studies around the world. Measurements were compared by accounting for differences between the studies, such as CO2 level gauging techniques and mean annual temperatures. Then, the data for each year was totaled, allowing the scientists to create a global…
Tags: CO2 emissions, greenhouse gas, increased emissions, SOIL, soil respiration, study
climate change, sustainable living, Weird & Wonderful, ,
They say that “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. While this is a good phrase to live by, NYC artist, Justin Gignac, takes the saying to a completely new level. Introducing: Garbage of New York City. The whole thing started in 2001, when a co-worker challenged the importance of package design. So, Gignac collected trash from the streets of New York City and packaged it into neat little transparent cubes (completely sealed and smell proof). You would think that no one would be crazy enough to buy a package of NYC trash, right? Wrong. Gignac has sold over 1,200…
Tags: artist sells trash, cubed trash, NYC garbage, NYC trash, packaged trash for sale
Business, sustainable living, Mar 28th, 2010,
In this day and age there never seems to be enough time to get everything done. You have your job, housework, family to take care of, bills to pay, friends to visit, projects to work on, appointments to go to, errands to run, and who knows how many other tasks to complete. Plus, somewhere in all of that you have to figure out how to make your activities as green or environmentally friendly as possible. Some days it all seems like too much to handle. Even with things precisely scheduled, it’s still possible to fall behind and you’re already stretched…
Tags: eco-friendly watches, green inventions, Sol Invictus, Sprout Watch, Time
Videos & Documentaries, Weird & Wonderful, ,
Here is some amazing video of last weekend’s volcanic eruption on Iceland. The volcano, named Eyjafjallajökull erupted for the first time in 200 years, causing Iceland Air to ground flights and hundreds of people to evacuate the area. From ITN News: Volcano erupts in southern Iceland From NBC’s Today show, by way of msnbc.com: Iceland’s spectacular fire and ice display Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy For more information on Eyjafjallajökull’s eruption, including pictures, video and news links, check out this New York Times blog entitled ‘One Word: Eyjafjallajokull’. by Graham Land
Tags: eruption, Eyjafjallajokull, Iceland, video, volcano
climate change, Politics, Videos & Documentaries, ,
As China’s economy grows, so does the amount of rubbish it produces – by 10% each year. The Chinese government is struggling to keep up with the consumer society its economic policies have created. The resulting dumps and landfills – both official and illegal – are an ever-increasing blight on the country’s growing metropolitan areas. One way to get rid of the rubbish is by burning it in government incinerators or simply out in the open, but this releases toxic fumes and dangerous pollution. Photojournalist Wang Jiuliang has been documenting the waste problem in and around China’s capital of Beijing…
Tags: Beijing, China, Chinese, dumps, garbage, Guardian, Lianzhou, photo, rubbish, Wang Jiuliang, waste
Climate & Change, Science & Technology, ,
When it comes to the effect livestock has on the environment, most people “in the know” will cite the UN’s “Livestock’s Long Shadow” report. This report basically claims that more greenhouse gas comes from livestock (18%) than all of the world’s transportation combined (15%). However, Frank Mitloehner, an air quality expert from the University of California-Davis, did some detective work recently and his findings strongly suggest otherwise. Mitloehner discovered that the livestock vs. transportation comparison is based on faulty data. How? Well, according to him, the livestock portion of the report takes into account everything that goes into animal agricultural…
Tags: climate change, flawed comparison, fossil fuels, greenhouse gas emissions, livestock, meat, study, Transportation
Business, Climate & Change, Weird & Wonderful, ,
As I write this, Earth Hour has come and gone for the Eastern US coast. I can’t speak for others in my community, or anyone else along the eastern seaboard, but we did indeed plunge ourselves into total electrical darkness. We simply played cards by candlelight, as we did last year. How did the rest of the world fare? Well… • 125 countries joined the campaign this year—a record for Earth Hour • 4,000 cities (at least) plunged into darkness • 5,664,496 people made the pledge to switch off their lights Along with all of that, quite a few landmarks,…
Tags: climate change, Earth Hour, environment, the world goes dark, turn off the lights, world monuments and landmarks go dark, WWF
Business, Sustainable living, sustainable living, Mar 27th, 2010,
Spring has sprung and that means the dreaded spring cleaning is underway (or will be very soon). This is the time if year when every single room of the house is cleaned from floor to ceiling. Windows are washed, furniture is rearranged, and that pile of junk in the corner is—well—typically moved to another corner somewhere. Here are some tips to help you make the grueling process of spring cleaning more green and less wasteful. Dealing with Clutter Do you have drawers, closets or boxes filled with random junk? Well, then it’s time to deal with that. The first thing…
Tags: clutter, eco-friendly, green tips, homemade cleaners, houseplants, organizing, spring cleaning
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