photo by b|m (Flickr CC)

Ready for some doom and gloom, alarmist and generally pessimistic news that will either make you want to not care at all (the current favorite option) or join the Dark Mountain Project?

Talking about the environment and pretending to be eco-friendly by wearing a ‘Kiss me, I’m Green’ button has apparently not saved the Earth from going to Hell in a proverbial hand basket. Ready for some shocking, but (honestly) to be expected, figures from the new ‘Living Planet’ report compiled by the WWF, the Zoological Society of London and the Global Footprint Network?

Let’s get on with the ecocide then, shall we?

In a nutshell, the environment, which is really just a euphemism for ‘everything’, is getting worse. 20 years on from the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and not only has the state of the planet not improved, it’s declined. Big time. Here are just a few low points of what’s happened Earth-wise while we were busy buying iPhones, eating burgers, driving SUVs and generally not giving a shit:

• Global demand for resources has doubled since 1996

• CO2 emissions have gone up by 40% in 20 years (mostly in the last 10 years)

• The biodiversity index in developing countries dropped by 60% (global biodiversity sunk by 28%) since 1970

OK, OK, I’ll end with a positive note: global population should peak sometime this century. Not good enough? Well here are a few suggestions from the authors of the report.

From a WWF press release:

While these findings are concerning, The Living Planet Report outlines a number of solutions needed to reverse the declining Living Planet Index and bring the Ecological Footprint down to within planetary limits. These are set out as 16 priority actions, and include improved consumption patterns, putting an economic value on natural capital, and creating legal and policy frameworks that manage equitable access to food, water and energy – particularly at the upcoming Rio+20 Earth Summit.

So don’t run to the hills yet. Or do, why should I mind? Nothing wrong with the hills; plenty of fresh air and water left, clover, mountain goats and things like that, as long as you choose the right hills. I wouldn’t know, personally. All I know is that I’m a bit bummed out reading this news, but I will try to be positive again, soon. Really I will.

Read more on the story in the Guardian.

photo credit: Fred (Wikimedia Commons)

Fishermen in Germany are blaming swimmers for peeing in a lake near Hamburg, resulting in the deaths of some 500 fish.

The fishermen contend that the large amount of phosphates contained in urine have caused large amounts of algae to grow, suffocating many fish.

Though there may be a scientific basis to the fishermen’s anti-bathers claims, Hamburg’s Urban Development and Environment Authority (BSU) contends that it’s ice skaters who are at fault.

From The Local:

The ice-skaters make a noise that wakes the fish out of hibernation. Then they can’t breathe and freeze. That’s a very common phenomenon.

–BSU spokeswoman Kerstin Graupner

Read more on the ins and outs of Hamburg’s ‘pee gate’ on msnbc.

DFG photo by Richard Shinn

A couple of months ago California’s only wild wolf went back to Oregon, leaving the Golden State effectively wolfless.

But now he’s back in Cali and the paparazzi have caught him on film.

Actually, OR7′s – or as he is sometimes referred to, Journey’s – photo was snapped by an employee of the California Department of Fish and Game

From the Los Angeles Times:

For the last couple of months he has wandered back and forth across the state border, most recently spending time in Modoc County. Tuesday, state fish and game staff were visiting ranchers, advising them that the wolf was in their area, when they spotted OR7 in the distance running across private land.

OR7 left his pack last September and has been a lone wolf since, though lately he’s been spotted hanging around with some coyotes in California. Perhaps if he gets lonely they are the closest things to wolves for company.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The odd flirtation with the coyotes was a surprise considering that wolves and coyotes are normally rivals. Wolf packs in Yellowstone National Park and other locations where the two species intermingle will attack and kill any coyotes seen on their territory. Department experts said, however, that it is not unheard of for transient gray wolves to befriend coyotes or domestic dogs on their journeys, apparently just for the company.

Lone wolves are not as competitive for territory as those in packs. In fact, they usually set out on their own to form new packs. OR7’s association with the coyotes could result in him mating with one, which could even produce wolf-coyote hybrids or “coywolves”.

Though local cattle ranchers in Northern California’s Siskiyou County recently proposed an ordinance to “ban” wolves (killing them presumably), officials rejected the proposal due to lack of community support and the fact that only one wolf, a celebrity no less, has been spotted in the state in nearly 100 years. Bit of an over-reaction by the cattle ranchers, really.

Still, OR7’s father and sibling both had death warrants (now suspended) on their heads for killing cattle.  His brother was illegally shot in Idaho.

Read more on OR7/Journey in this AP article.

lead image photo by National Park Service 

I’m talking about sealing air leaks in your house. A lot of buildings lack in these areas, which results in heat seeping in or out of your house and because of this, more energy expenditure.

The best way to deal with issues like this is to have a professional energy audit and a consultation on how to improve the energy efficiency in your house. However, if you can’t afford this, there is a good method you use to detect air leaks on your own:

1. Depressurize Your Home

Depressurizing your home is the first step. Close all windows and doors – and anything else that you can think of where air can seep in or out of the building. Now you want to switch of air conditioners, furnaces and anything else that moves air around in the building.

The next step is to force air either in or out of the building. Since you have closed everything, the air is forced to move through leaks. How do you do this? This is a good question and also probably the hardest part with the technique. In a professional energy audit one would usually have a blower door fan that could do this job – you will have to settle with an exhaust fan or a dryer. Turn it on in the room that you want to examine for leaks.

Another way to create this suction (the opposite way) is to open a window and place a large fan facing outwards in it. When you switch this on, air from within the room will flow out the window, and air from the outside of the building will have to move in the air leaks to make up for the pressure loss.

2. Detect Leaks

Image courtesy of Mathias Aarre Maehlum

Above is an illustration over typical air leaks in and out of a building. Make sure to examine these areas in your home.

This is where the fun starts. Get a hold of an incense-stick, light it on fire, and examine potential air leaks in your building. If you hold the stick close enough to potential leaks, the smoke should either be sucked into the leak or pushed outwards (depending on which method you used to depressurize your home). Note all leaks in a sheet of paper.

3. Sealing the Leaks

You can now either seal the leaks by using weatherstripping or caulking. If you are not sure how to use these techniques just ask the retailer where you buy these things – they should have a lot of experience sealing leaks.

Find out more information on how you can increase energy efficiency; conserve energy and ultimately reducing your carbon footprint at EnergyInformative.

Guest post by Mathias Aarre Maehlum for EnergyInformative.

Image courtesy of ARKive.org media library

Image courtesy of ARKive.org media library

Species: Greater adjutant (Leptoptilos dubius)

Status: Endangered (EN)

Interesting fact: The greater adjutant is named after an adjutant (military officer) because of its stately manner and habit of standing motionless for long periods of time.

With its naked pink head, very thick yellow bill and low-hanging neck pouch, the greater adjutant is a rather eye-catching stork. Colonies of greater adjutants can be seen gathering in India and Cambodia at the start of the dry season in October. Large nests are constructed on tall trees, and eggs are laid between November and January. These hatch after about a month of incubation. Nestlings are cared for until April when the start of the wet season prompts migration north. A carnivore and scavenger, the greater adjutant feeds on a variety of prey, including carrion, fish, reptiles and large insects. It is also known to feed in human rubbish dumps.

Once found across south and southeast Asia, the greater adjutant is now restricted to two small breeding populations. Loss of nesting habitat and feeding sites has had a huge impact as suitable wetland habitats are cleared, drained, polluted and disturbed by humans. Hunting of the adult birds and collection of eggs also threaten the greater adjutant. This species is legally protected in many countries, although enforcement of these laws is often lacking.

For more information on the greater adjutant see the Wildlife Conservation Society website

Find more photos and videos of the greater adjutant on the ARKive website.

With thanks to @inaturalist for this weeks suggested Endangered Species of the Week!

Lauren Pascoe, ARKive Media Researcher

photo credit: Ricardo Lisboa (350.org on Flickr CC)

Sign this petition to urge Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to veto the proposed law that would open up new areas to deforestation and provide amnesty to landowners who have previously cleared forestland illegally.

This new law could result in the destruction of an area of Amazon rainforest equivalent to the size of France and the UK put together.

Patrick Cunningham of the Indigenous People’s Cultural Support Trust is quoted in the Guardian:

The changes will overturn a law which even Brazil’s military dictatorship didn’t dare to challenge, and will be an abrogation of the country’s laudable and longstanding commitment to protection of the fragile rainforest environment.

With the Rio+20 Earth Summit 2012 just over a month away and close to 80% of Brazilians against the bill, President Rousseff has more than enough reasons to stand up to the powerful agricultural lobby and reject this bill.

Sign the petition to save the Brazilian Amazon today.

photo by ActiveSteve (Flickr CC)

Gold rushes in developing countries mean riches for a few and crumbs, death and ecocide for the poor and the environment.

But never mind all that, there’s money to be made. Gold in Peru is booming. According to Australia’s 9MSN, Gold is now Peru’s number one export, with countries like Switzerland, Canada and the US as major buyers.

The article also briefly mentions the conflicts and environmental damage caused by Peru’s goldmines without going into any detail.

Here are some details:

Gold mining is destroying the Peruvian Amazon rainforest through deforestation, digging, and mercury, oil and hydrocarbon contamination, which is hazardous to the unique and rich ecology of the forest, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. Many small-scale (often illegal) mines expose workers to high levels of mercury, which can damage the brain, kidneys and digestive system, as well as result in developmental delays.

So gold mining poisons people and destroys the environment, while a few get rich of the backbreaking labor of the poor.

From Al Jazeera:

The illegal gold miners of Peru are destroying thousands of hectares of the Amazon jungle. Environmentalists call the damage ‘catastrophic’, but the miners are doing it because they have no other choice.
They are part of what is known as ‘artisanal mining’ – small-scale mining, which globally engages at least 15 million people across 50 countries.

See this video report for more:

It’s just two weeks since a paper in Nature flagged an ominous thinning of ice shelves along parts of the Antarctic coast lying due south of the Pacific Ocean. The ice appears to be melting from below, as changing ocean currents are bringing relatively warm water to bathe the shelves’ undersides — and as the ice shelves lose mass, they also lose their ability to slow land-based ice in its slide toward the sea.

Now there’s something new to worry about. A pair of brand-new studies published today, one in Nature and one in its sister publication Nature Geoscience, are pointing to yet another danger zone, this one on Antarctica’s Weddell Sea coast, nestled in the armpit of the Antarctic Peninsula. The first study asserts that warm ocean currents are likely to eat significantly into the huge Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf by 2100; the second argues that the lay of the land underneath the shelf makes the ice even more unstable than it would otherwise be. “We don’t necessarily have any evidence for a dramatic change right now,” said Martin Seagirt of the University of Edinburgh, a co-author on the second paper, in a press conference, “but it’s on the threshold.”

Image courtesy of ClimateCentral.org

The reason, say Seagirt and his colleagues, is that airborne radar shows that the ice shelf sits atop a depressed basin of bedrock about 60 miles wide by 160 miles long by up to a mile and half below sea level at its deepest. Right now, the so-called grounding line — the place where a shelf makes the transition from grinding along the rock to floating freely in the sea — lies at the outer rim of that basin. As warmer water melts the ice back, it can flow into the basin and cause the ice within to detach from the bedrock relatively quickly. “Its very nearly afloat already,” Seagirt said. “It needs some push and we don’t believe the push needs to be very hard.”

It’s exactly that sort of push that emerges from the work of Hartmut Hellmer, of Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research and his colleagues. The scientists used a state-of-the-art climate model known as HadCM3, which simulates the responses of both atmosphere and oceans in a warming world, to test what might happen to the frigid waters off Antarctica as temperatures rise.  They found that a 7°F warming of the atmosphere — on the high end of what scientists expect by 2100, but still well within the plausible range — could warm the Weddell Sea by 3.5°F. Since the floating sea ice in the Weddell has already begun to disintegrate, that water would have easy access to the ice sheet.

If the Filchner-Ronne lifts off the bedrock, land-based glaciers that feed it will be able to move more quickly to the sea, especially, Seagirt said, because the inland part of the basin, where it slopes back upward toward the center of Antarctica, has a very smooth floor, which is easy for ice to slide along. This suggests it used to sit at the bottom of an ocean where sediment would have plastered over outcroppings of rock— a glimpse, perhaps, of things to come.

Since the Filchner-Ronne is mostly fed by ice from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, it’s natural to think that the much larger East Antarctic Ice Sheet, which holds enough ice to raise sea level by 160 feet or more, is safe (although with 20 feet of sea level rise potential itself the West Antarctic sheet isn’t anything to sneeze at). But the safety is by no means guaranteed: the two sheets, which are separated by the Transantarctic Mountains, aren’t completely isolated from each other. If you lose the Filchner-Ronne, Seagirt said, “there will be knock-on effects. There will be consequences for East Antarctica.”

None of this means the world is necessarily headed for apocalyptic sea level rise by the end of this century. Current projections still put the most likely increase by 2100 at about 3 feet, which is bad enough. But scientists still barely understand the dynamics of the world’s great ice sheets. They could turn out to be more stable than glaciologists expect.

Or, as these new results seem to imply, they could be much less.

Original post by Climatecentral.org

Image by Vassil Tzvetanov (source: Flickr)

graphic credit: darthpedrius (Flickr CC)

The chairman of the UK’s environment agency, Lord Smith, has voiced public support for the controversial natural gas and petroleum technique known as hydraulic fracturing or ‘fracking’ with the argument that it will provide a secure and domestic source of energy.

Fracking was linked to minor earthquakes when shale gas extraction was tried in the area around Blackpool, England. There are also concerns about groundwater contamination, methane leaks and the industrialization of the countryside, as has been experienced in large parts of the US, including government protected, publicly owned lands.

From The Ecologist:

Lord Smith’s backing follows pressure on the UK to [support] the extraction of shale gas. Former BP chief Lord Browne said last month that the Government should not ‘get in the way’ of shale gas companies such as Cuadrilla Resources, of which he is now a director. The British Geological Survey (BGS) estimate the UK could become one of the world’s biggest shale gas producers.

Lord Smith did qualify his support by stating that fracking must be done safely and effectively, meaning that methane isn’t released into atmosphere or groundwater contaminated.

Well, duh. I mean, this is England, not the Wild West of the US of A. It’s like with nuclear power, which the Environment chief is also backing. The threat of climate change seems to open doors to certain industries. But despite ‘orders’ from former environment chief Michael Meacher MP for officials to identify and clean up nuclear waste sites back in 1997, it simply did not happen.

So why should anyone believe in further government safeguards against nuclear or fracking-related issues?

Read more on Lord Smiths statements on BBC News.

image source: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

On Sunday 12 people were killed and 129 injured in a fire at a chemical plant in eastern Thailand, reports Pakistan’s Daily Times.

Just over two years ago I posted about Thailand’s Map Ta Phut industrial port in Rayong province and the environmental pollution the Thai petrochemical hub has wrought on the local population.

This latest deadly incident at Map Ta Phut caused hundreds of residents to evacuate the area, though loud rains prevented many people from hearing the calls to leave. This prompted Thailand’s industrial minister to call for an upgrade of Map Ta Phut’s warning systems.

From the Bangkok Post:

Charnvit Thongkhamkhiew, a foreman at the factory who witnessed the incident, said the blasts were so powerful that a pickup truck was lifted about 10m off the ground. Mr Charnvit went to Rayong Hospital to claim the body of his close friend Sanom Noichamnong, 53.

The company that owns the factory, BST Group, has promised to pay medical costs and compensation to those affected by the disaster.

Go to Asian Correspondent for information and commentary about the political implications and fallout from the explosion at Map Ta Phut

photo by Marcel Holyoak (Flickr CC)

The northern coast of Peru has seen the deaths of huge numbers of pelicans and dolphins in the last few weeks, prompting government warnings to stay away from certain beaches.

The Peruvian government’s health alert follows discoveries of some 1,200 dead birds (mostly pelicans) and over 800 dead dolphins. What is causing the deaths of these animals is unknown.

One possibility is that warming ocean temperatures have forced anchovies into other waters where the young birds can’t find them, meaning that the birds are dying due to starvation. Some 15 years ago El Niño was blamed for a mass pelican die off in Peru attributed to similar reasons.

This explanation does not fit the near 900 dolphins found dead. Officials have also more or less ruled out starvation, bird flu, by-catch or pesticide, heavy metal and biotoxin poisoning as well as seismic activity caused by oil exploration for the dolphin deaths.

From CNN:

Peruvian Deputy Environment Minister Gabriel Quijandria told CNN last month the dolphins may have died from an outbreak of Morbillivirus or Brucella bacteria. Morbillivirus is a class of viruses that are part of the same family as human measles; Brucella bacteria are the cause of many serious diseases in animals.

Read more on the story from Reuters.

credits: C. Korkosz, source: lasy.gov.pl

White-tailed Eagle is one of the largest birds of prey in the world. It weighs up to 6 kilograms, with a 2.5 metre wingspan.
“During the period 1800-1970, White-tailed Eagles in most of Europe, underwent dramatic declines, and became extinct in many regions of Western, central, and Southern Europe. While Norway, Germany, Poland, and Iceland harboured the largest surviving populations, pockets of reproducing pairs remained in several other countries” – according to Wikipedia.

The White-Tailed Eagle (Polish: Bielik, plural Bieliki) is considered Poland’s national symbol and it is believed that it’s this noble bird that appears on the Coat of Arms of Poland, proudly wearing a crown since the 10th century. It’s worth mentioning that the crown was removed from its head under the rules of the Soviet Union (1945-1989), as there could be only one ‘King’!

The species nowadays, is under strict protection.

The online transmission from the Bieliki’s nest is a joint educational project of The Polish State Forests and  Eagle Protection Comittee.
The nest is situated on a 120 year old pine, 30 metres above the ground. In mid March, the female laid two eggs. The first egg hatched on 27-28th April, the other chick appeared on camera on 1st May.

I was lucky enough to witness feeding time twice. Follow this link to watch Bieliki live, or, if you prefer, have a look at the highlights from the nest here.

Image courtesy of ARKive.org media library

Image courtesy of ARKive.org media library

Species: Coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae)

Status: Critically Endangered (CR)

Interesting Fact: The coelacanth is a member of an ancient lineage that has been around for over 360 million years. It may be the closest living relative to the first creature to walk on land!

The enigmatic coelacanth was believed to have gone extinct with the dinosaurs until its remarkable rediscovery in 1938. Fossils have been found all over the world except for Antarctica. Living coelacanths have been found in deep submarine caverns, reefs and slopes in a number of locations off the coast of Africa.

Unlike any other living animal, coelacanths have a hinged joint in the skull allowing the front part of the head to be lifted whilst feeding on fish such as cardinal fish, eels and skates. Coelacanths also have a large gel-filled cavity in the head, called the rostral organ, which can detect electric fields and may be used to locate prey or monitor its surroundings. Coelacanths are ovoviviparous (young develop inside the mother), and females may give birth to up to 26 pups. They are long lived, being thought to survive for up to 80 years.

The coelacanth is a difficult species to monitor. It is accidentally caught on lines whilst local fishermen search the deep waters for other species. A low reproductive rate means this species is particularly vulnerable to the removal of pregnant females from the population. The coelacanth is on listed Appendix I of CITES, and localised, voluntary bans on fishing protect areas where this species is known to inhabit.

Find out more about the coelacanth at the Australian Museum website.

See footage and images of the coelacanth on ARKive.

With thanks to @africanconserve for this suggested Endangered Species of the Week! If you would like to suggest an endangered species for us to profile, let us know via Twitter or Facebook.

Lauren Pascoe, ARKive Media Researcher

perigree moon in India, photo by PARSHOTAM LAL TANDON (Flickr CC)

Around the globe people have been marveling at the appearance of a perigree moon, also known as a supermoon.

The supermoon phenomenon occurs when a full Moon coincides with the closest distance the Moon comes to the Earth during its orbit. During this phenomenon the Moon can appear 14% larger and 30% brighter than normal.

Saturday night photographers around the world captured striking images of the supermoon, many with the moon behind iconic backdrops, such as the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and the Temple of Poseidon in Athens, Greece.

From the Guardian:

Amateur photographers were out in force across the world; in San Francisco, Ted Judah reported that he was one of 600 photographers jostling for the best view of the moon over the Golden Gate bridge; in the UK it was at its brightest at 4.30am, with Miguel Belert on the pier at Portleven in Cornwall to capture the scene.

See some great selections of photos from BBC News and the Associated Press.

Check out how Americans reacted to the perigree moon in this short video report from ITN News:

photo by Alex Parks (Flickr CC)

A lot of money and resources go into making our homes warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. How can we minimize the amount of power we use for climate control?

For example, 1/3 of all energy consumed in Germany is used to heat or cool homes. This can be quite an expense and is a significant source of climate change driving greenhouse gases.

People have been insulating their homes for thousands of years with grass, mud and other natural materials. Now we use fiberglass, foam insulation, special glass in more developed areas, while houses in poorer, hotter places are sometimes still insulated (and quite effectively) with loam – typically a sand/silt/clay mixture.

Some architects are working on glass houses that would be suitable in all climates and require neither heating nor cooling. The only requirement would be that those who live in them don’t throw stones.

Other ways to decrease your home’s energy bills include installing solar panels, energy-efficient light bulbs and replacing old appliances with Energy Star-rated ones.

Another thing to consider is what to do with your home while you’re not living in it. For example if you are away on vacation or for work, switch off your appliances and electronic devices. This means not just setting them to standby, but switching the power point off (if you life in the UK or Ireland, for example) or simply unplugging them from their electrical outlets.

In the kitchen, the most obvious targets are the kettle, toaster, coffee machine and microwave. After emptying the fridge and freezer, you can switch off these appliances, too. The oven, dishwasher and washing machine can also be unplugged but may require a little more effort: in most kitchens, these appliances have to be pulled away from the fixtures to reach the plug.

–The Ecologist

For more on this topic read the entire article in The Ecologist and for some general energy-saving tips for the home, see this report from My Fox Detroit.

The following short video from Deutsche Welle’s Global Ideas looks into past, present and future ways of insulating homes around the world:

source: sxc.hu

Up to one thousand locations in England and Wales may be contaminated with radioactive waste from military bases and factories. According to a new UK  government report, a quarter of these places have been already confirmed to be contaminated. These figures surprised the British people, all the more, because only in December 2011, the Ministry of Defence cleared about 15 landfills of nuclear waste in the entire country.
It leads the experts to one of two conclusions: either the authorities hid the real number of contaminated areas, or they did not realise the scale of the problem themselves.

“In 1997, I ordered examination of potentially contaminated sites and creation of disposal squares for radioactive waste. I am astonished and deeply concerned that this does not appear to have happened”,  former environment minister Michael Meacher told the BBC.

Radioactive contamination was discovered, among others, in Dalgety Bay and the former navy base in Chatham, Kent.

The Ministry Of Defence, has already announced that it will cooperate with local authorities, residents and owners of contaminated sites to find effective ways for the removal of radioactive wastes.

photo by 663highland (Wikimedia Commons)

Most of us associate wildlife with the countryside rather than with cities, unless you count cockroaches, rats and pigeons as wildlife (and why not, they are alive and not domesticated).

However, urban environments can be unlikely havens for certain species that thrive or at least hang on to tiny remnants of their original habitats.

Larger animals can pose complications, such as the exploding deer population in Washington, DC. And by exploding, I was referring to their numbers, not the actual deer. That would really be a problem.

Then there are the UK’s urban foxes – loved, hated or even feared – they’ve landed their own prime time TV show on Channel 4 called ‘Foxes Live: Wild in the City’. That’s right, a live reality show filming urban foxes in London and other cities. How typically British.

From This Is Gloucestershire:

Although it is hard to confirm population numbers, it is believed more than 33,000 foxes exist in urban areas, with a further 225,000 living on the countryside. Last year, 81 cubs and 17 adults were released from wildlife rescue centres.

Possibly due to all the parks, Londoners really fancy themselves a bit wild. A recent competition for building homes for London wildlife featured bird and bat boxes, planters and various ideas for urban beehives. Not terribly exciting, but laudable enough.

On the other end of the spectrum, a wildlife officer recently shot and killed a young 110-pound (50-kilo) cougar in a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, USA. More exciting, but infinitely sadder.

Even the Japanese megalopolis of Tokyo has its share of urban wildlife, ranging from frogs and river turtles to raccoon dogs and palm civet cats. Read more about those in the Japan Times.

So next time you see an eagle killing a pigeon or a giant hare racing through a city park, remember that they are examples of urban wildlife, not freaks or invaders to be simply spurned, exterminated or uploaded on to YouTube. No more freakish than you are when you go camping in the forest or swimming in a mountain lake with your stupid Ed Hardy sunglasses.

Image courtesy of EthicalCommunity.com

You have to be nuts not to be eating nuts (pun intended)! Nuts are super-nutritious for you, easy to carry around, and delicious. With so many varieties of them, it’s hard to tell which ones are the cream-of-the-crop when it comes to nutritional punch.

We did the research, and we picked out the 5 “core” nuts that you should be eating daily to give you that daily punch you need for maximum energy at minimum cost.

Raw Almonds
Want to have “wolverine” like energy? Take about 40 raw almonds a day. Avoid the salted kind.

Brazil Nuts
Brazil nuts cover your daily selenium (a powerful antioxidant) requirements by 7 fold. No, literally! One ounce of brazil nuts will cover your track by 777%. Are you feeling lucky?

Cashews
Asides from being able to use cashews for stir fry dishes and other delicious meals, cashews are heart-friendly. Low fat content, and the fat that is contained is of extreme health benefit to the heart.

Walnuts
Also super good for the heart and circulation.

Hazelnuts
Good as a source for Vitamin and generally good for the heart and muscles.

Original post by Ethicalcommunity.com

I’ve never told anyone this before, but when I was a kid, I always wanted a rubber chicken. Many of the comedic heroes of my childhood got to play with them — the Three Stooges, for example, and Soupy Sales (I’m dating myself and revealing my lowbrow side all at once here). It’s not like they were all that hard to find, even before the Internet.

I also had a slightly more elevated set of interests, including an endless fascination with the space program. I was too young to be aware of Sputnik, but I watched as Alan Shepard blasted off to become the first American in space in 1961, and as the first close-up photos of Jupiter began to stream in from Pioneer 10 a little over a decade later.

Image courtesy of ClimateCentral.org

Little did I suspect that these two childhood obsessions would one day cross paths. But last month, against all odds, it happened: a team of investigators sent a rubber chicken named Camilla to an altitude of 120,000 feet, not once, but twice, in an historic scientific experiment that will add nothing whatever to humankind’s understanding of the mysterious workings of the universe. It wasn’t rocket science. It wasn’t especially funny, either (although the video here is really fun).

Image courtesy of ClimateCentral.org

But it was really important anyway, seriously, and here’s why. The story begins with a satellite called the Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO. It’s up in orbit monitoring solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which can disrupt communications and even threaten the power grid here on Earth. Data from SDO feeds into a little-known division of the National Weather Service called the Space Weather Prediction Center, which warns people when these solar eruptions happen.

NASA isn’t just a science organization, though: it also has an educational mission, and to engage students in the science SDO does, mission scientist Tony Phillips created a mission mascot, Camilla Corona, with her own Twitter feed. Under Phillips’ mentorship, a group of high school and middle school students in Bishop, Calif., has gone beyond just following the chicken: they’ve put together a citizen science team called Earth to Sky.

It’s that team that launched Camilla, not on a rocket but dangling from a helium balloon. She wore a hand-knitted sweater, with two radiation badges attached, and she went up twice — first, when the Sun was relatively quiet, and then, a week later, during a radiation storm picked up by the Solar Dynamics Observer. The idea was to see how the radiation environment changed; it also set the stage for an upcoming experiment where the kids will send bacteria into space, to see how dangerous the radiation is to living things. (Somehow, the team didn’t consider Camilla’s own reaction to be definitive, but they did send seven cockroaches and two dozen sunflower seeds aloft as well, in a modified lunchbox).

The experiment won’t tell biologists or astrobiologists anything they don’t already know from more sophisticated experiments, but that’s not the point. It’s gotten a group of kids entirely captivated by science — not just reading about it, but actually doing it, and getting plenty of recognition to boot.

And that’s kind of a big deal.

Original post by ClimateCentral.org

photo by Luther Blissett (Karen Eliot on Flickr CC)

A Dutch architectural firm is creating buildings from locally recycled material, significantly reducing the greenhouse gas emissions normally produced during the construction process.

Rotterdam-based 2012architecten terms this use of local, reused materials, which cuts down on transport, waste and fuel costs “recyclicity” or “superuse” with the goal of regenerating “districts into dynamic ecosystems”.

Besides buildings, 2012architecten designs other structures like playgrounds and campgrounds along the same principles.

From Al Jazeera English:

There are no limits to the model. The architects have designed everything from single homes to offices, playgrounds and cafes. Waste materials have included parts from decommissioned aeroplanes, washing machines, tyres and billboards.

Other examples of superuse include making flooring from old desktops, shelving from old hospital ceilings and kitchen drawers out of old billboards.

Check out the following video report from Al Jazeera Earthrise for more on just how the processes of recyclicity and superuse work: