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Animal Rights, Pollution, Mar 13th, 2012,
In preparation for the eventuality of oil spills resulting from drilling in the icy Arctic region, Shell Oil might be enlisting the help of sniffer dogs as an inexpensive contingency plan. Shell plans to start drilling off the northwest coast of Alaska as early as June. Since there are as of yet no methods for detecting oil spills that are covered by ice and snow, the use of dachshunds and border collies could be the best the minds of Shell and other companies have been able to come up with. Personally, I have no idea if this is an effective…
Tags: arctic, dachshund, drilling, Greenpeace, oil, Shell, sniffer dogs, spill
Conservation, Politics, Mar 12th, 2012,
A fast track approach by the US government towards certain renewable energy projects has drawn lawsuits and protests from some Native American groups and environmentalists in California. US President Barack Obama has set a goal of sourcing 80% of the country’s electricity from clean projects, but some of the projects are on lands considered sacred to Native American tribes. Environmental groups are also concerned that the projects could hard sensitive desert ecology. Government officials claim to have consulted tribal organizations and have determined that the works, such as a massive solar energy farm in Blythe, California, will not harm historical…
Tags: California, desert, government, native american, sacred, solar energy
Conservation, Nature, Wildlife & Flora, Mar 10th, 2012,
Species: African wild ass (Equus africanus) Status: Critically Endangered (CR) Interesting Fact: The African wild ass is the ancestor of the domestic donkey! An extremely hardy species, the African wild ass exists in scattered populations in northern Africa. In its desert habitat, it can sustain water loss of up to 30% of its body weight, though it usually remains within 30 kilometres of a water source. While the African wild ass may seek out shade in the hottest part of the day, in early morning and late evening it is more active, and seeks out grasses and herbs on which to…
Tags: african wild ass, animals, ARKive, donkeys, endangered species, Equus africanus
Animals, Nature, Videos & Documentaries, Mar 9th, 2012,
Since it’s Friday, I thought I’d post a few videos that are sure to shock, amuse and make you go hmmm… First, a tigon has been born at a zoo China. A tigon, or tiglon, is a hybrid big cat born of a lion mother and a tiger father. Generally smaller than ligers, the better-known lion-tiger hybrid – born of a lion father and tiger mother – tigons are not necessarily sterile and have been known to produce offspring of their own. Still, tigons have weak immune systems and ‘confused genetics’ according to the following ITN News report. But who…
Tags: flood, Hawaii, hybrid, Kilauea, lion, tiger, tigon, volcano
Climate & Change, climate change, Health, Natural disasters, Politics, Mar 8th, 2012,
By Alyson Kenward While the cumulative effects of rising global temperatures have already caused dramatic changes to our planet, those changes often seem distant and it’s hard to put faces to them. But as climate change becomes more disruptive to daily life around the world, it’s more likely than not that the faces of that disruption will be those of women. With the world celebrating International Women’s Day on Thursday, it’s a good time to reflect on just how vulnerable women are to the effects of climate change. If you’re surprised to hear that gender makes a difference, you shouldn’t…
Tags: climatecentral.org, international women's day, Natural Resources Defense Council, women and climate change, world health organization
Science & Technology, ,
Today, in honor of International Women’s Day, the Sun is bombarding the Earth with magnetic energy. Apparently someone (the Sun) doesn’t like women (the Moon) very much. OK, it’s a poor joke, but there’s a recession on. Seriously though, the largest solar storm in five years is sending some bad juju our way. On the plus side, someone who doesn’t live in cold northern wasteland might for once catch at glimpse of the famed Aurora Borealis. (Notice how I didn’t immediately follow with ‘or Northern Lights’ as is customary). A pair of solar flares earlier in the week has triggered…
Tags: Aurora Borealis, Earth, Northern Lights, solar flares, solar storm, sun
Animals, Wildlife & Flora, Mar 7th, 2012,
Journey (aka OR-7), for a while the only Gray Wolf living wild in the state of California, has now packed up and returned north to Oregon. It was fun while it lasted, but like many who become disillusioned with the shallow glitz of celebrity, Journey is in need of real friends. Those don’t exist in California, not for wolves anyway. OR-7 won’t find a pack or a lone mate, since he is the only wild wolf known to set foot in California since the 1920s. Of course, since Journey is tracked by satellite thanks to a GPS collar, it’s easy…
Tags: California, gray, journey, or-7, Oregon, wolf
Green Cars, green living, Science & Technology, Sustainable living, sustainable living, ,
There’s no denying the fact that we live in an increasingly connected world. Finding old friends through Facebook has never been easier. Video chatting with friends or family across the world requires nothing more than a web cam and an internet connection. You’d be hard pressed to find something that we use in our daily lives that hasn’t been turned digital. Now, your commute is turning digital as well. The New Cities Foundation (NCF), a non-profit based in Paris focused on creating a “more socially, economically and environmentally sustainable urban future,” has taken on the task of rethinking the way Silicon…
Tags: commuting, driving technology, Earthgarage.com, green cars, NCF, new cities foundation
Climate & Change, Politics, Mar 6th, 2012,
Canada is famous for ice hockey. That, maple syrup and being a nicer, cleaner version of the United States. But real, traditional ice hockey, played outdoors on frozen lakes and ponds, may become a thing of the past due to climate change. Of course, nowadays expensive, energy-consuming technology makes weather obsolete. I mean, even the state of Florida has two ice hockey teams. Winter sports have really taken off in the Sunshine State. But way up north some traditional winter sports are on thin ice, with winter temperatures in some parts of Canada not allowing sufficient ice formation. And climate…
Tags: Alberta, Canada, climate change, greenhouse gas, hockey, ice hockey, tar sands
Politics, Sustainable living, Videos & Documentaries, Mar 5th, 2012,
Charles Eisenstein is an author, teacher and speaker whose works include the books The Ascent of Humanity, The Yoga of Eating and – most recently – Sacred Economics. Sacred Economics addresses the morality of the debt-fuelled economic model that requires unsustainable growth and that individuals (or corporations or nations) benefit at the expense of others. Capitalism – the dominant global economic system – is based on competition rather than co-operation, and ultimately fails to address issues like fairness, compassion, the environment and our true nature. The current economic crisis is not just economic – it is systemic and fundamental. But…
Tags: Charles Eisenstein, occupy wall street, Sacred Economics
Conservation, Nature, Wildlife & Flora, Mar 3rd, 2012,
Species: Dlinza pinwheel (Trachycystis clifdeni) Status: Critically Endangered (CR) Interesting Fact: The Dlinza pinwheel has a line of bristles round its shell! The exceptionally striking Dlinza pinwheel is a small species of snail that is found in only the Dlinza Forest in South Africa. Its name comes from the unusual whorl of bristles that radiate out from the edge of its shell, and resemble a Catherine wheel or pinwheel firework. The fragile, almost translucent pale-brown shell is a spiral shape with up to five whorls. In its coastal forest home, the Dlinza pinwheel can be found beneath leaves, under fallen logs,…
Tags: ARKive.org, Conservation, critically endangered, Dlinza pinwheel, endangered species of the week, snail endangered, snails, Trachycystis clifdeni
Health, Sustainable living, Mar 2nd, 2012,
Last year the UK government asked supermarkets to stop putting ‘sell-by’ dates on perishable food items to discourage food waste. Instead, foods that are potentially dangerous after a certain date must have a ‘use by’ date, while those that pose no danger, but may go down in quality simply have a ‘best before’ date on their labels. Of course it is obscene when a supermarket, or even an individual, throws out perfectly edible food because it’s past its sell-by date (not past its use by or even best before date) when there are people in need of food in the…
Tags: best by, food poverty, sainsbury's, sell-by date, supermarket, use by
Sustainable living, Mar 1st, 2012,
England once had a dream: Newly-constructed, zero-carbon, ecotowns; constructed from recycled materials and full of bike lanes. Some upper crusty Britons absolutely seethed at the very mention of an ecotown. So what happened? Oh, yeah – Con-Lib Dem coalition, economic recession, yada yada. But the dream is not over. Northstowe, in Cambridgeshire is set to be the UK’s first ecotown. Its planned location is on an old RAF airfield. This op-ed in the Guardian suggests that Northstowe will be but a boring blip on the map, as opposed to the socialist vision of post war ‘new towns’, which relocated urban…
Tags: ecotown, newtowns, Northstowe, Punggol, Singapore
Politics, Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, Feb 29th, 2012,
An independent report on the level 7 nuclear incident at Fukushima, Japan, following the tsunami on March 11, 2011, reveals bad communication between authorities and irresponsible behavior by Japanese government officials. The report was carried out by the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation, who interviewed some 300 politicians, bureaucrats and workers who were involved in the Fukushima disaster. Lies about the level of risk, a lack of information provided to the public and general incompetence reflect poorly on Japan’s government, energy industry and nuclear energy as a whole. From Japan Times: The panel’s report reveals that although the public was being…
Tags: disaster, Fukushima, nuclear, report
Health, Politics, Feb 28th, 2012,
Rich people are more likely to steal, cheat, lie and cut you off in traffic, according to research conducted at the University of California Berkeley. Where to file this: in the ‘so obvious we didn’t need a study to confirm it’ category, or in the ‘wait a second, rich people don’t need to steal and cheat, it’s poor people who are pushed into this kind of behavior’ section? Bit of both, maybe? The study suggests that the rich don’t feel that they need to depend on others, so they have no problem burning them. If you think you’ll never need…
Tags: Berkeley, poor, research, rich, study, unethical
Science & Technology, Weird & Wonderful, ,
The Japanese construction company, Obayashi Corporation, has stated that they will design and construct a space elevator by the year 2050. Initial plans have already been developed and they are currently working on its appearance and technical operation. The construction of the elevator will be possible thanks to small cylindrical structures called carbon nanotubes. “In Obayashi’s vision, a cable would be stretched from a spaceport on Earth’s surface up to an altitude of 96,000 km (60,000 miles), or about one-quarter of the distance between our planet and the moon. A counterweight at its end would help “anchor” the cable in…
Tags: japan, nanotubes, Obayashi, space elevator
Health, Science & Technology, Feb 27th, 2012,
I’ve been noticing lately that most nights I tend to sleep for 4 hours and then lie awake for a while, maybe up to two hours, before falling asleep again. I don’t think I’ve always done this, and have been dismissing it as a consequence of getting older. But a couple of articles from last week have got me thinking that it’s a natural, normal thing to do. As someone who has wrestled with sleep issues for most of my life, I tend to read any sleep or insomnia-related article I stumble upon, even this one on an expensive, but…
Tags: research, sleep
Animal Rights, Animals, Nature, Wildlife & Flora, ,
Consuming shark fin soup is a bad idea, not only because of the decreasing number of sharks, but it can also lead to a brain damage. “A new study has found high concentrations of BMAA in shark fins — a neurotoxin linked to neurodegenerative diseases in humans including Alzheimer’s and Lou Gehrig disease (ALS)”, informs sunnewsnetwork.ca. Patients with these diseases, tested before they died, had very high levels of BMAA – up to 256 nanograms per milligram – in their brains. Shark fins contain between 144 and 1836 ng/mg of this neurotoxin. The threat comes, not only from eating the…
Tags: Alzheimer's, brain, fin soup, killing, neurotoxins, shark
Conservation, Nature, Wildlife & Flora, ,
Species: Dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) Status: Critically Endangered (CR) Interesting Fact: The dawn redwood was known only from ancient fossils, until a small population was discovered in the forests of Central China in 1944. Considered to be one of the greatest botanical finds of the 20th century, the dawn redwood has been dubbed a ‘living fossil’. This coniferous tree grows with an orange-brown, thick, tapering trunk and a broad, buttressed base. Green in the spring and summer, the leaves of this deciduous tree turn a vibrant reddish-brown before falling to the ground in autumn. The dawn redwood is a monoecious species, meaning the male…
Tags: ARKive.org, dawn redwood, endangered plants, endangered species of the week, Metasequoia glyptostroboides
Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, Feb 24th, 2012,
Not to Canada bash, but the North American Country – known the world over as much kinder, gentler and more just in comparison to its neighbor, the big bad US of A – has been grabbing a few headlines lately for its deteriorating (or at least more conspicuously poor) environmental record. And let’s be real. Environmental pollution is also a social justice issue. Coal kills people as well as animals and plants. Never mind greenhouse gases. Likewise the tar sands in Alberta. Likewise poisonous emissions from chemical plants on Canada’s Great Lakes. So, without further ado, on to the bashing,…
Tags: Canada, environment, Pollution, tar sands
