environment
clock | February 15, 2007Raleigh Leaders Plan Test of LED Lighting:
Raleigh officials have teamed up with Cree, Inc. in Research Triangle Park to save money and help the environment. Raleigh public works employees will test and implement Cree's Light Emitting Diode lighting components across the city.
In a pilot program late last year, LED lights were installed in a parking deck downtown. Progress Energy, the city's primary energy provider, said that the floor equipped with LED lights used more than 40 percent less energy than the standard lighting system. Also, the quality of the lighting was greatly improved,…
aardvarchaeology | February 14, 2007I'm an archaeologist and I see things in the long perspective. Let me offer you a suggestion.
The CO2, greenhouse effect, climate issue is no cause for concern compared to the issue of radioactive waste.
I mean, long after our manipulation of the atmosphere's composition and the sea levels has stopped, the waste from our reactors will be an absolutely lethal threat to ecology.
People 40 000 years from now won't give a damn about our CO2 emissions. But our subterranean caches of radioactive waste will still be a huge problem. And I believe that we have a pretty heavy responsibility to them.…
ksharpe | February 13, 2007Tune in to daily podcasts from the route up Mount Kilimanjaro, the world's tallest free-standing mountain and, at 19,340 feet, the highest peak in Africa.
Hosted at seedmagazine.com, the series is following day-by-day progress of a team made up by:
Will Cross, mountaineer and traveler
Jimmy Gould, Seed board member
Jo Anderson, environmental biologist
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The team will be producing a new, three-to-six minute 'cast each day and, conditions permitting, posting them to the trek homepage as they're created. The group plans to reach Uhuru Peak—Kili's summit—on Thursday, February 15th.
Kilimanjaro…
pharyngula | February 9, 2007I have mixed feelings about EO Wilson's book, The Creation(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). It's wonderfully well written, it's on a subject I care about and that Wilson is clearly passionate about, and it's trying to straighten out religious people on an important matter, but it's also written directly to an audience of which I am not a part. I found myself alienated by the style, and despite my appreciation of his effort, simply wasn't able to finish the book. I'm going to have to try and wade through those last few chapters sometime, though, when I'm feeling charitable enough to be able to cope…
sarahdasher | February 8, 2007More than 85 evangelical Christian leaders have banded together to form the Evangelical Climate Initiative, a group aimed at mobilizing conservative Christians against climate change.
They kicked off their campaign this month with a television spot and full-page print ads in The New York Times and Christianity Today.
Signatories take the following as their manifesto:
Claim 1: Human-induced climate change is real.Claim 2: The consequences of climate change will be significant, and will hit the poor the hardest.Claim 3: Christian moral convictions demand our response to the climate change…
sarahdasher | February 8, 2007Researchers at Purdue University have created a portable refinery that converts food, paper and plastic trash into electricity. The prototype biorefinery generates approximately 90 percent more energy than it consumes.
Its efficiency owes to a series of steps:
1. Separate organic food material from residual trash, such as paper, plastic, Styrofoam and cardboard.
2. Ferment food waste into ethanol with industrial yeast.
3. Transfer non-food waste to a gasifier, where it is heated under low-oxygen conditions until it breaks down into low-grade propane gas and methane.
4. Combust gas (from non-…
sarahdasher | February 6, 2007The launch of Microsoft Vista may initiate a massive wave of computer obsolescence. Where do we put all the refuse? Take a guess...
Guiyu, China
These women are picking through computer wires that have been exported to rural China for disposal. Once sorted, the wires, insulated with PVC and coated with brominated flame retardants, will be burned and emit carcinogenic fumes (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins). That's why we export them.
According to the Basel Action Network, a toxic-dumping watchdog group, more than 50% of obsolete computers are exported to developing countries…
clock | February 5, 2007Seventeen out of eighteen Whooping Cranes from the Operation Migration were killed by the recent storm in Florida. The one survivor is being tracked right now via radiotransmitter, so the health state is still not known.
sarahdasher | February 4, 2007In the wake of the IPCC report, you may have missed out on this proposal, which bears integrally on our economy, our environment and our health.
The 2002 Farm Bill is up for renewal. On Wednesday, Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns introduced a new Farm Bill that, while not as revolutionary as some had hoped, takes steps to mitigate some of the uglier faces of large-scale agribusiness.
The new bill eliminates subsidies for farmers who earn more than $200 thousand per year (down from $2.5 million), and aims to democratize the current subsidy system which tends to over-compensate highly…
grrlscientist | February 3, 2007
Greenland Ice Sheets are breaking up.
Image source: NASA.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report [PDF] was just released to the public yesterday and already, it is being criticised by scientists for being "too optimistic". For example, the observed sea level rise has been following the upper range of the 2001 IPCC estimate. Thus, "It's pretty unequivocal" that the rise in sea levels is accelerating.
Other experts said the panel missed some important new developments, because it set a December 2005 cutoff date for submission of scientific papers and other data. Since…
grrlscientist | February 3, 2007tags: global warming, IPCC Report, weather, environment, nature
A new report [PDF] that was released last Friday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reveals that there is at least a 90 percent chance that the burning of fossil fuels was the primary cause of global warming since 1950. The report stated that the world as a whole needs to cut its fossil fuel emissions by 80 percent by the year 2050. This report includes work from more than 2,000 scientists from across the globe and is based on peer-reviewed research.
The report, considered the most authoritative science on…
clock | February 3, 2007Russ, correctly, points out that the new UN report on Climate Change says not a word about the impact global warming will have on ecosystems, plants and animals (including the human animal).
clock | February 3, 2007Global Warming threat may be even harsher than the latest UN report suggests, but the Wingnuts want to make sure we teach the kids quite the opposite. Yeesh!
sarahdasher | February 3, 2007The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a sea-faring radical environmental group known for using guerilla tactics to disable Japanese whaling vessels in Antarctica, has once again had its registration revoked. Their craft, a 180-foot steel-hulled enforecement ship christened the Farley Mowat, is now officially a pirate vessel:
As Farley Mowat Captain Paul Watson told indymedia.org, "I am proud to add my name to the long list of honourable and noble pirates like Sir Francis Drake, John Paul Jones and Jean LaFitte. To that end we have our own version of the Pretty Red or Joli Rouge and it is…
don hoyt gorman | February 2, 2007Here's three quotes from today's IPCC press conference, which I transcribed straight from the webcast (hence the wacky grammar).
The first two are from Dr. Susan Solomon, co-chair of the report committee and an NOAA researcher, an eminent scientist whom I hold in very high regard, not least for her role in getting this report through the intergovernmental committee with its forceful language intact. In the first quote, Dr. Solomon unfortunately doesn't answer the reporter's question in "layman's terms," which it clearly required. In the second, she makes a good point about the IPCC's role in…
ksharpe | February 2, 2007Surfing the wave of coverage of this morning's report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? This Q & A piece in the Guardian UK is short, sharp, and to the point—a great starting place for neophytes (and big-picture types).
The heart of the matter:
What does [the IPCC report] say?
Emissions of greenhouse gases are expected to further change the climate over the next 100 years, it says. As a result, sea levels will rise over the century by around half a metre, snow will disappear from all but the highest mountains, deserts will spread, oceans will become acidic, leading to the…
ksharpe | February 1, 2007There are hours to go before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issues its much-anticipated report, "Climate Change 2007," but already the internets are abuzz with early punditry.
Joseph Romm at Grist speculates that because the report is written by committee, the findings may have "a conservative edge."
The DeSmog Blog anticipates the PR circus that will doubtless follow on the heels of the report.
And BlueClimate joins ScienceBloggers Josh Rosenau and Chris Mooney in speculating on early reports that the IPCC document will credit global warming with creating stronger hurricanes.…
ksharpe | February 1, 2007Over at BLDGblog, Geoff Manaugh has a long interview with Ed Mazria of the activist architectural nonprofit Architecture 2030.
Mazria is organizing an "Emergency Teach-In" for architects, student architects, and design professionals. The event, to be held at the New York Academy of Sciences in New York City on February 20th, and broadcast live on the web, isspecifically organized around the idea that "ecological literacy [must] become a central tenet of design education," and that "a major transformation of the academic design community must begin today."
Read the full story, here.
Image…
mikethemadbiologist | January 30, 2007Bush is trying to do an end run around the newly elected Democratic Congress. Because we all know the American people spoke clearly in the last election, and they said, "We want to gut environmental and worker protection!" From the NY Times (italics mine):
President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.
In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a…
sarahdasher | January 29, 2007Anyone know how to explain this?
Story at The Economist.
Hat-tip, Evan Priestley.