Manuel said:
"This is great news! I hope all cities pass this into law.The practice of using plastic bags just to quickly dispose of them has been going on far t..." [read]
Jay Knecht said:
"What are the performance stats for the Son of Max? ..." [read]
gazelle said:
"@ Dallas:
The book, and the supplementary videos in the "How It All Ends" youtube series, address this in detail, but I'll try to paraphrase:..." [read]
Barry said:
"Kofi Annan has about as much of a clue about electric cars and developing countries as Ann Ann the Panda.
He underestimates the ingenuity o..." [read]
JJ said:
"Very cool. I didn't thought that biodesel might be our future fuel...." [read]
Derek said:
""I guarantee you this will spark huge debates around the world," she said. "We have to delve into this in a way that hasn't been done in a long tim..." [read]
Dear Pablo: Is it true that the heat absorbed by dark solar panels contributes to climate change?
The Source Of The Myth
This myth recently surfaced in the sequel to Freakanomics, call Superfreakanomics. Some people are very disappointed with the authors, who created quite a stir with their first book. The source of the myth is a quote by Nathan Myhrvold, the former Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft (commenting outside of his expertise):
Dimmable CFLs now available - photo via Velo Steve @ flickr.
Today's compact fluorescent lights are now light-years ahead of their ancestors of just a few years ago, in terms of the range of styles available and their lower price points. True, LED lighting is nipping at the heels of the lighting industry, solving a lot of lighting needs with very low energy use, and possibly a better life-cycle profile. But at TreeHugger, we've long agitated for CFLs, and we still do. Now that the European Union has banned incandescent bulbs, perhaps we'll be able to see that a CFL world will be still bright enough, and with billions of dollars saved in energy costs as a bonus.
Yet some of us can't quite forget about the dangerous drop of mercury in CFLs.
According to a new study, obesity is a leading contributor to the high costs of healthcare in America. Apparently, being fat is killing everyone’s wallet when it comes to insurance. Could going green help reduce the high price of medical care in the Land of the Free by offering a more healthy way-to-live? Ahhhh, yeah!
Of course, when purchasing a new appliance, it makes sense to go with the most efficient energy star rated appliance. BUT, buying a brand new efficient energy star rated appliance is not always greener or less expensive than continuing to use an older, less efficient appliance.
Should we be eating more beef in order to slow global warming? It sounds counterintuitive, but it may be so: Cattle could be part of the whole ecological equation to solving climate change and restoring healthy, bio-diverse ecosystems. I am a vegetarian, but I maintain there is a place for grass-fed beef on family menus—and pasture-raised cattle in global warming solutions. Cows can help more than harm if they are sustainably raised.
Let’s clear up one issue: There is no such thing as local vs. organic. When it comes to consumer choice, we should be buying local and organic, though for mostly different reasons.
Our world has become very much reliant on technology, and why shouldn't it. Technology has progressed in leaps and bounds over the years creating new and improved methods of health care, faster and more powerful networking, cleaner and more organized industry. However, despite its many great advances, technology is not necessarily what is going to save us from the ill-effects of global warming...
If you're looking for recent global warming articles
on the web, you need to know who to trust. It's true that the internet
is a great resource for information, but it's also a tool for writers
and journalists with a political agenda to publish anything they want,
to spread lies and deceive the public on the real facts about global warming.
Dear Pablo: I've heard that we don't have enough remaining fossil fuels available to burn in order to reach the carbon dioxide concentrations that the IPCC scientists are predicting. What would happen to the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and the global average temperature if we were to burn all remaining fossil fuels? Do you think IPCC scientists are overstating the problem to get us to act more quickly?
Last weekend we attended the creative event Pecha Kucha Night Barcelona, where creative people could informally show their work and ideas. One such creative was Ignasi Pérez, the Spanish sustainable architect who just launched the book ECO Productos (not yet available in English). Read on to see what Pérez has to say about The Three Little Pigs and the word 'sustainability' which doesn't exist in Spanish......
Dear Pablo: Why should I turn down my water heater? Isn't it just as efficient to dilute really hot water with cold water in the faucet than to use barely warm enough water straight out of the hot side?...
The thing you hear all the time is that Antarctica is cooling and that's not the case... (The average temperature rise was) very comparable to the global average.
And this gives skeptics of man-made global warming one less arrow in their quivers to back their view that global warming is a myth....
Photo courtesy of WKTVOregon Wild Sets the Record Straight on Timber Industry
Ever wonder what the precise impacts of logging and deforestation are, and whether the timber industry’s defensive environmental claims hold any water? Well, Oregon Wild, an Oregon forest and wildlife preservation group (among other things) has taken the liberty of putting together a comprehensive slideshow detailing and combating misleading myths promoted by the logging industry. They’ve created a factual, in-depth look at logging practices, forest fires, and the impact of global warming on forests. ...
With hotly-contested Primaries in full swing it may be no surprise to learn that some special interests are willing to stoop to the lowest level imaginable if they believe it will help make their message memorable. But Big Coal has certainly taken things a step too far…...
Sunset in Key West: Everybody mellows out on the pier and looks out over the Gulf of Mexico and when the sun hits the water, applauds. But has the sunset been enhanced by pollution? Scientific American notes that "according to urban legend, air pollution enhances the beauty of a sunset." We quote from the article:
The traditional explanation of the red sky at sunset is that as the sunlight travels a longer path from the horizon to the pier, "most of the blue has been scattered out of that beam" explains Stephen Corfidi, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). What remains are the warmer hues of yellow, orange and red, which blend into a yellowish-orange sunset.
But how red? "In an atmosphere with no junk at anytime, you'll never get a sunset that would make someone with normal color vision say, 'Wow that's red!'" says Craig Bohren, professor emeritus of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University. "It is certainly true that the 'pollution' results in redder sunsets."...
This trash can from Whole Foods here in Manhattan comes labeled with a good reminder that the resources it swallows up are gone for the long haul. We might as well consider it to be "forever." Perhaps not forever in the string-theory sense, but within the extended temporal dimension we humans find ourselves living, it's apparent enough that there is no reversing the tide of time. So if we want the benefit of the energy inputs which have already gone into making that non-recyclable plastic bag from your organic chips, too bad, it's back to square one harvesting more raw materials and using more energy to make another bag from scratch. More to the point, there's no turning the clock back on designing a better product in the first place once your hand glibly, guiltily or guilessly feeds it to this trash can. TreeHugger reader Peggy asks:
How can anything that is used once and tossed be considered a 'great product'?
The elegant answer after the jump to hyperspace......
Not as funny as Stephen Colbert but a little more thorough, the New Scientist deconstructs 26 myths used by climate skeptics. They say "With so much at stake, it is right that climate science is subjected to the most intense scrutiny. What does not help is for the real issues to be muddied by discredited arguments or wild theories." There is also a guide for to assessing the evidence which starts with the line "Truth is the first casualty of war. As the political battle over climate change has heated up, so has the propaganda campaign."
Canards they refuse to duck from include "Human CO2 emissions are too tiny to matter" and "CO2 isn't the most important greenhouse gas" and many more. Collect them all at ::New Scientist...
We recently posted on the three major fronts in the battle over how to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions. One we named Charge of the Risk Brigades, epitomizing the disagreements over priority. The Charge involves repeated skirmishes about which ‘horse of the environmental apocolypse’ to work on first. And, wouldn’t you know, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a.k.a. the Big C, has joined the fray with an op.ed. piece published in the Washington Times . Here’s the portion of that commentary that reminds us of ‘The Charge’: “Beginning in the 1970s, regulators around the world followed Rachel Carson's suggestion that lawmakers ban the pesticide DDT, once used to control malaria, because they figured bed nets and other measures were enough. After millions of deaths and hundreds of millions of people falling sick every year for a couple decades, World Health Organization regulators and officials finally decided DDT should be used to curb the death toll. Tragically, millions had to die before officials realized the Greens were wrong”. Who knew that the World Health Organization was a regulatory body?...
While the scientific evidence continues to mount on climate change, and former allies defect, the climate change skeptic crowd is as assertive as ever. On Saturday, a person or group calling itself Internet Skeptic uploaded fourteen videos to YouTube of a college professor (who is unnamed) lecturing students on the skeptics' case against global warming. It's very interesting (and a little disturbing) to watch Professor X lecture students on the standard criticisms of global warming science, and to also openly push a libertarian line of thought (note: as a former college professor, I found this last element of the lectures very disturbing). Fortunately, there's very little in these lectures that can't be answered by perusing Grist's new "How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic" feature, or the index at RealClimate. ::Global Warming Myths videos via linton at HuggUPDATE: After a little more digging, I did come across what appears to be the event announcement for the gathering shown in these videos. If I've got the right information, these lectures were given at an event for the Libertarian Studies Organization at Ohio State University. If this is correct, then my characterization of the setting in these videos was wrong....
Dare you to name one truly "Treehugging" corporation? Hard, isn't it? That's not good news, not just for the environment but for all the companies who are spending a lot of green on trying to look green. Thanks to BP's recent troubles in the Arctic and elsewhere (and more to come), the old phenomenon of companies trying to look green, or "greenwashing" as it's known, returns to the limelight. Sure, the name switch from British Petroleum to BP (or "beyond petroleum") was cool, but c'mon, how "beyond" it can you be when you've still got all that black stuff on your hands? As Athan Manuel, the director of lands protection at the Sierra Club, puts it to the Washington Post, "Compared to their colleagues in the oil and gas industry, they're the best...[But] Being the best of the oil industry is like being the smartest of the Three Stooges. At the end of the day you're Moe, you're still a stooge."...
"Is there nature in L.A.?" seems the natural question, and it's the question that Jenny Price is asked whenever she writes about the environment in her hometown. Her answer, in this luminous two-part piece from the recent Believer, is that "L.A. has become the finest place in America to think and write about nature." Whoa there, Jenny: are we talking about the same highway-crossed, brown-skied, apocalypse-prone American megalopolis? It turns out we are, and she's got a point.
Seeing a natural world that is often ignored, threatened, or concealed (consider the just-bulldozed South Central Farm, or the concrete-covered Los Angeles River, which has been all but "lost" by the city), Price shows us another version of L.A., and a new kind of nature writing. She wants to challenge our "American nature story, which seeks salvation in nature Out There but refuses to see how we use and transform nature in the city." ...
"Does Tel Aviv need more arteries or a blood-transfusion?," asks Tel Aviv-based David Pearlman from the Heschel Center. Pearlman addressed a crowd of about 50 American and Canadian young adults on a summer trip to Israel today. For 10 days, the youth- some of them environmental stewards in the making, others who thought it could be a neat way to see the country, are here to learn about Israel's environmental woes and achievements. It was called the Earth, Wind, Water and Fire tour and sponsored by North American philanthropists hoping to increase awareness to environmental issues in Israel....
Last night, chocolate chip cookies sparked a debate on coconut oil. Instead of butter or shortening, these cookies contained 100 percent natural Spectrum Organic Coconut Oil. "Isn't that bad for you?" I asked, after eating five. According to the master chef (my mother), coconut oil is the victim of an 80’s smear campaign against tropical oil producers, an attempt by domestic oil producers to eliminate the competition. ...
It's a given that anytime we post a story on wind power someone is going to comment that "turbines kill birds," suggesting that wind power may therefore be unacceptable. Compared to what? Hitting birds with automobiles (along with turtles, groundhogs, and deer)? Birds caught by feral cats? Birds colliding with buildings or phone towers? Quite possibly, a higher mortality will be attached to the transmission wires needed to get the wind power to market. Why, then, do many associate bird mortality only with wind turbines? We hope to get to the bottom of this "death by turbine" myth hole, and point to the factors that can actually be managed though public involvement....
Many myths offer entertaining or poetic insight into the mysteries of human nature. But when it comes to the environment, "myths" can be harmful mis-truths used to undermine support for meaningful action.
...
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the weekly archive if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
on 10.19.09
Image via 
Last weekend we attended the creative event 
Dear Pablo: Why should I turn down my water heater? Isn't it just as efficient to dilute really hot water with cold water in the faucet than to use barely warm enough water straight out of the hot side?...
Photo courtesy of 
With hotly-contested Primaries in full swing it may be no surprise to learn that some special interests are willing to stoop to the lowest level imaginable if they believe it will help make their message memorable. But Big Coal has certainly taken things a step too far…...
Sunset in Key West: Everybody mellows out on the pier and looks out over the Gulf of Mexico and when the sun hits the water, applauds. But has the sunset been enhanced by pollution? Scientific American notes that "according to urban legend, air pollution enhances the beauty of a sunset." We quote from the article:
The traditional explanation of the red sky at sunset is that as the sunlight travels a longer path from the horizon to the pier, "most of the blue has been scattered out of that beam" explains Stephen Corfidi, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). What remains are the warmer hues of yellow, orange and red, which blend into a yellowish-orange sunset.
But how red? "In an atmosphere with no junk at anytime, you'll never get a sunset that would make someone with normal color vision say, 'Wow that's red!'" says Craig Bohren, professor emeritus of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University. "It is certainly true that the 'pollution' results in redder sunsets."...
This trash can from Whole Foods here in Manhattan comes labeled with a good reminder that the resources it swallows up are gone for the long haul. We might as well consider it to be "forever." Perhaps not forever in the string-theory sense, but within the extended temporal dimension we humans find ourselves living, it's apparent enough that there is no reversing the tide of time. So if we want the benefit of the energy inputs which have already gone into making that non-recyclable plastic bag from your organic chips, too bad, it's back to square one harvesting more raw materials and using more energy to make another bag from scratch. More to the point, there's no turning the clock back on designing a better product in the first place once your hand glibly, guiltily or guilessly feeds it to this trash can. TreeHugger reader Peggy 
Not as funny as 
We recently posted on the 
Dare you to name one truly "Treehugging" corporation? Hard, isn't it? That's not good news, not just for the environment but for all the companies who are spending a lot of green on trying to look green. Thanks to BP's 
"Is there nature in L.A.?" seems the natural question, and it's the question that Jenny Price is asked whenever she writes about the environment in her hometown. Her answer, in 
"Does Tel Aviv need more arteries or a blood-transfusion?," asks Tel Aviv-based David Pearlman from the 
Last night, chocolate chip cookies sparked a debate on coconut oil. Instead of butter or shortening, these cookies contained 100 percent natural 
It's a given that anytime we post a story on wind power someone is going to comment that "turbines kill birds," suggesting that wind power may therefore be unacceptable. Compared to what? Hitting birds with automobiles (along with turtles, groundhogs, and deer)? Birds caught by feral cats? Birds colliding with buildings or phone towers? Quite possibly, a higher mortality will be attached to the transmission wires needed to get the wind power to market. Why, then, do many associate bird mortality only with wind turbines? We hope to get to the bottom of this "death by turbine" myth hole, and point to the factors that can actually be managed though public involvement....
