Recently in Environment Category

Bloomberg reports today that, astoundingly, Iraq is now opening its doors to BP, Exxon Mobile, and Shell for the first time since 1972, when the country, under the leadership of the now executed Saddam Hussein, nationalized all of its oil fields. Astoundingly, this will open the 3rd largest oil reserves in the world directly to western countries.

And, um... why are we complaining about the bank bailouts? How much money did the citizens of this country spend on (and will continue to spend on) making this happen for the oil corporations? (Not to mention the number of people that were killed!)  If there is a hell, unfettered capitalist greed needs to rot in it.

In my earlier post, I mentioned that the surf has been out of control with the storm and earthquake.  The life guard stations had to be moved inland—waaaay inland, and the surf still almost got to them.  Here you can see that the sand was completely eroded away by the surf, creating the sudden drop off that was as tall as me!  (Click to enlarge.)

Normally, along a seashore, one expects to find seashells.  Well, not so here in the South Bay.  Regrettably, the dumping of LA's sewage has long ago killed such sea life.  But what I found even more distressing was the amount of trash the surf brought to the shore line.  It was unbelievable!  Thousands of plastic bottle caps littered the shoreline as if they were the missing seashells! Bits of styrofoam, in various sizes, were everywhere.  This is outrageous!  We have turned the Pacific Ocean into a sewer. Click the image below to see two different pictures.

we eat genetically modified food?

Three types of Monsanto genetically modified corn are under scrutiny in the wake of a new study published by the International Journal Of Biological Sciences which found that rats ingesting the corn were subject to statistically significant amounts of organ toxicity.

...

The finding that corn produced by one of the world's agricultural giants could cause organ failure has been met with obvious concern by food activists and consumers alike.

"Effects were mostly concentrated in kidney and liver function, the two major diet detoxification organs, but in detail differed with each GM type. In addition, some effects on heart, adrenal, spleen and blood cells were also frequently noted. "

[Source: Monsanto's genetically-modified corn causes organ failure in rats // Current.]

I've actually been thinking more and more about leaving the US. I mean: for good. I find myself so disillusioned with what is happening in my native land.

My country forces education reform that is destroying creativity, problem solving, deep thinking, and analysis of knowledge to inform carefully considered long term solution-making for the immediacy of factionalized curriculum memorization. My country will not move beyond prejudice and discrimination. My country is squandering our national (as well as international) resources. My country is flinging privacy and personal freedom as fast as it escalates fear. My country cares more about greed, money, and possessing things than it does about people and their basic wellbeing. My country is removing the separation of church and state and forcing people to live by tenets of religion in which they may not personally believe. My country allows business, built on greed and outsourcing, to become so large they can not fail and must receive tax payer's money to keep the executes rolling in fat bonuses with shameless abandon. My nation's government is bought and sold by transglobal corporations and makes divisiveness its core ethic.

I can do little of nothing to stop or change any of this.

I wonder if this is a natural part of getting older--seeing the world through more jaded eyes. But I see other nations, not without their faults to be sure, at least maintaining some more moderate and productive sense of balance. I just think the US government is fundamentally broken and inept.

I shared last night at dinner that I actually don't think the US will be able to move to a better place within my lifetime. This saddens me greatly.

I've supported Lawrence Lessig's work for some time. I've had his "Change Congress" link on my site for some time. In this video he sums up things, and, unlike my dismal state of disillusion, offers a ray of hope. He doesn't frame the problem as conservative versus liberal or Republican versus Democrat. He is insightful and brilliant.

This morning I sat down to read the news headlines while eating breakfast and learned that Delta has increased the fees they charge for checking bags. My first thought was, "So, what's next? Is Walmart going to start charging for shopping cart use?"

Well, good grief! Almost.

A few articles down I see a video link to Walmart now charging for shopping bags in selected stores.

Frankly, I think the idea of the reusable shopping bag is a good idea. I think anything that reduces the vast amount of plastic waste we generate in our world is a good thing. It cuts oil consumption. (Plastic manufacture uses petroleum products.) And, it reduces landfill waste and off shore dumping.

The grocery stores in Manhattan Beach have offered reusable bags for months now. (Click the image to view the larger picture.)

I've got to get to this place while I live out here! While many people are going in and out of the park, this video really puts things in perspective: people look like insects (especially the rock climbers near 2:45) scurrying about in the grand scheme of this untamable place. And I love the music Steven Bumgardner chose: Peter Gabriel's "The Feeling Begins" on Passion. Click below to watch.

Yosemite is bigger than Rhode Island at almost 800,000 acres, but it receives about 3.5 million visitors each year, and most of them spend time in Yosemite Valley. This project was shot back in 2005 after purchasing a Sony Z1U. This was my first HD project (ok, fine, HDV) and I spent about a week in Yosemite during the busy month of July. The footage was all shot in real time, and then sped up in post.

I chose busy places during busy days to show the effects of this mass of humanity. I could have just as easily pointed my camera in another direction and shown nothing but plants, animals and wilderness. Yosemite is popular, but it's also still a relatively wild place.

I’ve lived and worked in National Parks for almost 20 years, and as much as I love landscape photography, I also like looking at the human footprint and the human experience in our national parks. Some of this footage helped me get my current job in 2006, as a videoographer for the National Park Service and the photographer/editor/producer of the web video series "Yosemite Nature Notes" nps.gov/yose/naturenotes"

[Source: People in Yosemite: A TimeLapse Study on Vimeo.]

Animals have the ability to sense natural disasters before they happen. I hope that's not why all of the sea lions inexplicably left Pier 39 in San Francisco.

I've been to Pier 39 and saw the smelly barking creatures. They were rather fascinating.

If you've been to the Fisherman's Wharf part of San Francisco in the past twenty years, chances are you've seen (and heard) the resident sea lions that call Pier 39 home.  I'd spend long stretches of time just observing them and their behavior patterns, and always found them neat.

Since about a month ago, when they collectively slipped into the bay and disappeared, the pier has been quiet and barren."

(Via: Where'd the Pier 39 Sea Lions Go? - Neatorama.)

We are entering a new age of cool! Apple's iPhone is a game changer!

The bike wheel contains all you need so that no sensors or additional electronics need to be added to the frame and an existing bike can be retrofitted with the blink of an eye. ...

By using a series of sensors and a Bluetooth connection to the user's iPhone, which can be mounted on the handlebars, the wheel can monitor the bicycle's speed, direction and distance traveled, as well as collect data on air pollution and even the proximity of the rider's friends. ...

The Copenhagen Wheel is part of a more general trend: that of inserting intelligence in our everyday objects and of creating a smart support infrastructure around ourselves for everyday life... The Wheel has a smart lock: if somebody tries to steal it, it goes into a mode where the brake regenerates the maximum amount of power, and sends you a text message. So in the worst case scenario the thief will have charged your batteries before you get back your bike."

(Via MIT’s big wheel in Copenhagen.)

Scientists studying a crevasse in the Ethiopian desert say we may be witnessing the birth of a future ocean. In 2005, a 35-mile-long rift broke open as two parts of the African continent separated. Researchers from several countries have confirmed that the volcanic processes at work beneath the Ethiopian rift are nearly identical to those at the bottom of the world's oceans. They say it is likely the beginning of a new sea. Host Liane Hansen talks with Professor Cynthia Ebinger of the University of Rochester about the event.

link: New Ocean May Be Forming In The Desert : NPR

Well, with the earthquake in the Pacific, I guess I shouldn't ride my bike along the coast as we're at a heightened alert for a possible tsunami. I frequently ride down by the ocean through an area that is labeled as a Tsunami Evacuation Area.

While unlikely, the Tsunami Emergency Information being distributed indicates that an earthquake in Alaska could cause serious tsunami damage in LA within a mere hour! But we have only had 13 tsunami events in California in the past 75 years. The only one to affect Los Angeles bay area was in 1930 when the maximum level of water run-up was almost 20 feet.

A 20 foot run-up would absolutely affect the area in which I ride.

We had what appeared to be snow in Manhattan Beach last year--the ash from the fires was falling from the sky. The smoke from the fires this summer is still north of us. The amount of smoke is just unbelievable. Keep in mind that the smoke you see in the picture below hides the north mountain range. These smoke clouds rise astoundingly high into the atmosphere.

(Click the image below to see a larger version.)

This post contains a series of beautiful caterpillars that don't even look real. The article refers to them as alien looking, and, indeed, they look very strange.

We just had another earthquake less than 3 miles from the house. It was short (just under 3 seconds) and only a 2.7 magnitude about 8 miles deep. The epicenters are all happening in the same area—probably a dozen in the last week.

While the other earthquakes have been basically slow steady rumbles, this one felt more intense and in the middle of it had a real kick that jarred everything. It knocked my computer monitor out of place!

This magnitude 4.1 earthquake was also located in Hawthorne, CA, 4.88 miles from the house--very close to the last epicenter. The depth was 7.5 miles. Maybe that's why it had such a kick to it.

I wonder if they feel worse right on top of the epicenter or out a ways. Interestingly, the deep rumbling sound appeared to be coming from south of here, and Hawthorne is north. Is that because there are mountains just south of me?

The waveform is above. The USGS had the information up on their site when I checked it within a minute of the earthquake. I wonder if it is completely automated? [Update: after reading some on the site, yes. The process is automated. Cool!]

[Again, after reading more, the sheer, or S-wave travels more slowly and is ultimately what is used to measure the magnitude of the quake. I wonder if the jolt I felt today was the S-wave passing through this area? The S-wave is colored green on the waveform to the right, which represents 120 seconds.]

This one, with its jarring jolt was more frightening than any of the others have been. I've got my seismometer running on my iPhone in case we have any aftershocks.

[Update: Apparently we had another earthquake, 2.1 magnitude, 9.9 miles deep, about 1.5 miles from where I'm sitting. The epicenter was across the street from where I had dinner last Sunday. Worse than that: it was only .82 of a mile from one of those huge Chevron gas tanks! But, I didn't feel a thing or thought it was part of the previous earthquake, which seemed to rumble for quite some time.]

By the way, I just love Google Earth and the way the USGS site integrates with it. I can click a link which downloads a KLM file. Double click it and see exactly where the epicenter is. Then I select the measure tool and draw a line from the epicenter to any spot to see how far it is away.

For all the news, it really is a big gorgeous world out there. Check out this Pano and the others linked to it...

Sunrise at Robert's Grove in Belize

What better way for the ladies to celebrate Earth Day than to wear LeeAnn Herreid's fully functioning Thermoscope Earrings, which are attractively set in sterling silver. Of course, lots of guys are now wearing earrings as well. So I guess you too can get in on the action.

The earrings, while fully functional, do not have actual numeric values for you to watch the earth heat up. Order yours for only $34 from uncommon goods.

Uncommon goods has an interesting collection of things, including a solar powered backpack that will charge your small electronic gadgets (iPod, digital camera, cell phone, etc.) while you save fossil fuels by walking to work. For just $40 you can store sunshine in a mason jar that will glow at night.

And for those who are difficult to gift because, well, they just have it all, I bet they don't have a laptop case made from reclaimed, recycled US highway billboards! (I always wondered what they did with those old signs!)

This is fascinating. I knew that data centers required massive amounts of power to run the computers and keep them cool, but I hadn't thought of it in these terms.

How much CO₂ does a google search produce if a google search produces CO₂? Well, Harvard physicist Alex Wissner-Gross did the math:

… a typical search generates about 7g of CO₂ Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.”

Google is secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to divulge the locations of its data centres. However, with more than 200m internet searches estimated globally daily, the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the internet is provoking concern. A recent report by Gartner, the industry analysts, said the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines - about 2% of global CO₂ emissions. “Data centres are among the most energy-intensive facilities imaginable,” said Evan Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Banks of servers storing billions of web pages require power.

Link - via BuzzFeed

[Source: Google’s Carbon Footprint]

Today I am removing my OneBillionBulbs group from my blog. I thank everyone that chose to participate. Maybe we helped our planet! As I mentioned a while back (in this post and in this post), I replaced every bulb in the house in Atlanta. These bulbs, while more expensive than traditional bulbs, all carried a 7 year warranty. They used far less electricity. I wanted (still want) to reduce my carbon footprint.

Well, I'm sad to report that about 20% of the bulbs went out, died, stopped working within a month or two. And then when the house went up for sale, the realtor said that the CFL bulbs all had to go. They would inhibit the sale of the house. And today my OneBillionBulbs blog widget died. The whole OneBillionBulbs site seems to be down (gone?).

So, I'm taking it off of the blog. And, here in California, a state with green on its mind, the house came with CFL bulbs in the kitchen but no place else. I'll leave it at that.

We flirt with that which we know not. Who oversees such risk management?

The world’s physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature.

But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Although it sounds bizarre, the case touches on a serious issue that has bothered scholars and scientists in recent years — namely how to estimate the risk of new groundbreaking experiments and who gets to decide whether or not to go ahead.

[From Neatorama » Blog Archive » Dudes Sue the Large Hadron Collider to Stop Total World Annihilation]

I think that when you can see the amount of carbon your car emits into the atmosphere, the issue becomes a little bit more real. Click on the image for a large image you can read.

Source: Frederik Samuel

Every now and then I hear or read something that really makes me stop and think. Check this out:

And he said, 'Joe, you know, there's only one unit of exchange, and it isn't any kind of currency in the world. It's called the calorie. 3,000 calories in and 3,000 calories out and everything's sustainable; the world is sustainable--the unit of measurement of heat energy. But when oil came along as a cheap source of it, you have human beings using 1,000,000 calories a day. And so we built a civilization that no Caesar could have built hurling along at 70 miles per hour in hard exoskeletons at high speed. People don't really understand what the cheap oil fiesta provided.

And besides being non-sustainable, the ultimate unit of exchange and the ultimate decider will be the availability of the calorie––not just the one in your stomach, the one that melted that metal, the one that grows the plants, the petro chemicals that grow the plants, and so on. And he said, at some point it's got to come back down. It will come back down.

He said the third world will never rise to the first world standards. You will see the first world drop down to the third world standards because they're closer to sustainability. ... Everything runs on electricity, and electricity runs on oil. And when it doesn't run on oil, it runs on coal which makes the situation worse. Imagine when the electrical grid starts dimming out. It's pretty scary stuff.'"

He goes on to say that running out of oil will not happen as a gradual decline over decades. He states that since our consumption of oil is increasing geometrically instead of linearly, it will happen with a relatively unexpected suddenness. Since our civilization is built and sustained by oil consumption, what will the transformation to a different source of energy look like?

Wow!

Source of Quotation: Joe Bageant's July, 2007, podcast with George Kenney over at Electric Politics (about an hour and a half into the podcast)

Yes, while taking the pano of the dried up Lake Allatoonah, I decided to do a rain dance! Well, nothing else seems to be working, right? And this morning? A few hours of rain! What can I say?! As we need days and days of precipitation, I should have danced longer I guess.

This whole issue of the impact of global warming, a phenomenon the President assures us is not happening, remember Black is the New White*, will probably have untold human and economic impact in the next 50 years. Rising sea levels will only be one issue, but people can move. But it goes deeper. Alabama is already suing Georgia for more access to drinking water. I suspect that access to pure drinking water will become the stuff of war and terrorist attacks.

Where will it all lead? What will the migration patterns of people in the USA look like as they avoid the swelling seas and hunt for cooler climates with more water? Tim says this is real! And then from the New York Times:

Draining: The 100-foot-high bathtub ring left by the dwindling waters of Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam.

The Future Is Drying Up
By JON GERTNER
Published: October 21, 2007

... global warming more commonly evokes the specter of rising oceans submerging our great coastal cities. By comparison, the steady decrease in mountain snowpack — the loss of the deep accumulation of high-altitude winter snow that melts each spring to provide the American West with most of its water — seems to be a more modest worry. But not all researchers agree with this ranking of dangers. ... Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the United States government’s pre-eminent research facilities, remarked that diminished supplies of fresh water might prove a far more serious problem than slowly rising seas. When I met with Chu last summer in Berkeley, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, which provides most of the water for Northern California, was at its lowest level in 20 years. Chu noted that even the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30 to 70 percent of the snowpack will disappear. “There’s a two-thirds chance there will be a disaster,” Chu said, “and that’s in the best scenario.”

Source: Climate - Drought - Global Warming - American West - Arizona - Utah - Colorado - New Mexico - Nevada - New York Times

* Oops, my anger over the failure of this administration is showing yet again! Is anyone paying attention?

I find my life littered with too much unsolicited advertising as it is. I want all of my visual space less polluted with unsolicited advertising. I want my audio space less polluted with unsolicited advertising--in fact, just less polluted with noise (including the constant beat of what someone else defines as "music") in general. My email box...my mailbox... I want the physical and virtual space I live in to be noise and clutter free! I dream. Sadly, methinks more is to come! Nothing is free--not even space.

It starts with Starbucks - hear a song you like while sipping a latte, connect your iPhone to their wifi, buy it. Take it a step further, and when you walk into a Target, Nordstroms, or Sephora (for example) and get targeted deals sent right to your promiscuous iPhone. Obviously you don’t have to choose to view it, or use the wifi in such stores, but there’s the model! Maybe this Starbucks collaboration will lead to essentially free (ad-driven) wifi in more places. This could really turn the tide as it seems more and more wifi is closing the doors to being offered up for free.

Source: Why Starbucks/Apple Collab is so Interesting

I have frequently heard this sentiment expressed from visitors to my home. Well, in past years. Today Atlanta is being developed at such an extreme rate, the green of trees is becoming a mere memory. I returned from Boston to find all of the trees across the street from me marked with a large flourescent orange "X" for destruction. High rise developments will replace them. Up the street two large areas have just been cleared of trees for similar "luxury" developments. These were old, tall, grand trees.

So I decided to create this little photo essay. Below is a picture from Google Earth of the area in which I live. (Clicking on the top picture of the area will bring up an enlarged view.) Each colored dot is where I was standing when I took the picture numbered with the same color. For example: the red dot near "1" is where I stood facing the number "1" when I shot the picture below called "1: Near the Church." The green dot is where I stood when I shot the two pictures "3: North Woods" and "4: South Woods" and so forth. Clicking on the pictures below will also open a window with a larger picture.

Obviously several of these areas have already been developed since the Google Earth satellite image was loaded. I'm not against progress; I'm just a tree hugger!

Google Image of the Neighborhood

1: Near the Church (All trees destroyed)

2: Across from Another Church (All trees destroyed)


3: North Woods (All trees will be destroyed)


4: South Woods (All trees will be destroyed)


5: Condos Part 1 (All trees destroyed)


6: Condos Part 2 (All trees destroyed)


7: West Woods (All trees will be destroyed)


8: Already Developed (All trees destroyed, these planted)


9: Development Now Underway (All trees destroyed)

We think much too little about sustainability.

... Päster, who's a sustainability engineer, has tried to calculate the true cost of bottling and transporting a one-liter bottle of Fiji Water to America (it's the latest fashionable mineral water, not available yet in Europe, at least to my knowledge). Apart from the trail of fossil fuels burned and greenhouse gases emitted, the most spectacular result is that manufacturing and transporting that 1-kg bottle uses 6.74 kg of water -- 7 times more than the content of the bottle. (See details here). ...

Source: Global bottled insanity

What is this group called Tim's Bright Reflections!? Simply put, it's a way to encourage everyone to replace their old light bulbs with the new CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps) which are much more energy efficient. Also, we can track how much money we are saving as well as how much we are reducing our carbon footprint on the planet. You can get these stats individually, and we can see how we do as a group [check out the group stats in my sidebar on this page].

And why wouldn't everyone want to join!

• It's FREE to join my group
• It's easy to join my group
• You can track our groups (and your individual) savings on my site in the sidebar on the right and the OneBillionBulbs.com site
• You save money with every bulb you replace
• You help our planet with every bulb you replace
• You bulbs are easy to find (Target, Home Depot, even grocery stores, etc.)
• The bulbs are not very expensive
• The bulbs are typically warranted for at least 6 years (compared to the normal bulbs that seem to die very soon!)
• You will feel better for having done something that really matters

How do you join my group? Simply click here and have fun!

...that the first floor has been completely Al Gored! I have replaced all of the traditional light bulbs with the new energy efficient ones that look like fluorescent lights all coiled up. Apparently the proper term for these is CFL, or compact fluorescent lamp. I want to do something to reduce my carbon footprint on our planet.

Supposedly these new lights, made by n:vision, will last 9 years as they have a 9 year warranty. I certainly hope so. But, at any rate, they are far more energy efficient using far less wattage of electricity to produce the same light. The ewquivalent of a 100 watt bulb uses only 27 watts. So, I'm doing my part to reduce carbon emissions! :o) Happy Me!

This little plug for OneBillionBulbs.com:

Imagine the possibilities. Imagine if people all over the world mobilized to replace one billion standard incandescent light bulbs with energy-efficient compact fluorescent (CFL) light bulbs. What would that mean? It would mean that those people would save money each month on their electricity bill. It would mean they would save enough energy to light tens of millions of homes for a year. It would mean the prevention of greenhouse gases equivalent to the annual emissions of millions of cars.

I love this site. One their site the above map is interactive. When you mouse over a state you can see the data for that state. You can set up an account and enter your bulb purchases. The account then automatically calculates your energy savings as well as the amount of carbon you have reduced. It shows you this information for the entire year as well as the total from the date of installation. Naturally I set mine up.

Here is my data as of today:

(Click to enlarge)

(Click to enlarge)

And now I get outrageous. Plug in the numbers and see what you can do!

Very cool!

This website has a lot of interesting longitudinal weather-related data. I recommend it. Here is a chart from the site.

Wow! I've visited a dying glacier. I walked all around on top of it. (Pictures from my glacier walk in Norway in July, 2006, can be found at this link.) I drank from the fresh water in its pools. I leaped over its crevices. I realized it was melting. I saw it melting, giving birth to a raging river. I heard the melting water flow. I felt the cool radiating from the melting water. Being on the glacier was a spiritual experience. But I never framed this experience within the context of death (though I thought I certainly would die if I misstepped and fell from the path on the way to the glacier). But, yes. Death is exactly it. I find this tragic. I just read this article and post it. For some reason I feel confident that this phone number will be very busy.

If you could talk to a glacier, what would you say? British artist Katie Paterson thought that some people may actually want to hear the sounds of a dying glacier, and say something back in return. To facilitate such a conversation, she setup a waterproof mobile phone at the base of Europe’s largest glacier.

If you’re interested, the glacier can be reached at 07758 225698 until tomorrow, June 13th (international long distance rates apply).

My Source: Neatorama
Their Source: Make