Plant a Tree!

Odwalla is planting trees in state parks and all it takes on your part is to visit their site and click the state you live in. My click got the 711th tree for NY! Pass the word.

World's common birds declining

One-in-eight of the world's birds - 1,226 species - was listed as being Threatened. Of these, 190 faced an imminent risk of extinction.

Plants and CO2

Another nail in the global coffin No plant CO2 relief in warm world.

Plants take up less CO2 under warmer/drier conditions (like what is expected to happen over large swathes of the worlds grasslands.

"So in the warm year, the temperature goes up and causes more evapotranspiration from the plants," he (Jay Arnone, who led the study) told BBC News.

"But plants have evolved to 'know' that when it gets dry they should curb their water loss, so they reduce the apertures of their stomata (pores) to conserve water, and that constrains the amount of CO2 they can take up (by photosynthesis)."

In addition warmer temperatures meant that bacteria degraded extra carbon resulting in a net release of carbon to the atmosphere.

Offshore Drilling

Add one more reason that I fall into the 80% of Americans who think this country is on the wrong track.

The House approve a bill opening waters 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts to oil and natural gas development.

It still has to be approved by the senate (which it probably will since the Democrats have become weaklings pandering to the desire by the public for lower gas prices in an election year).

Despite as the article points out: "But expanded offshore drilling has become a mantra of Republican energy policy that has been felt in both presidential and congressional campaigns, even though lifting the drilling ban would have little if any impact on gasoline prices or produce any more oil for years."

Hello people!!! It is not going to help gas prices!!!! All it will do is feed the profits of giant oil companies and feed our dependence on oil for even longer.

GAH!

Apocalypse Watch

The Large Hadron Collider has officially set in motion the test that will recreate the conditions that existed just a few moments after the Big Bang.

Either that, or the folks at CERN have just set the planet in motion on a path towards total annihilation.

Either way, we'll learn more about our universe. Either it's birth, or what it's like to be sucked into a black hole. It's a win-win for science.

Read a BBC article about the LHC HERE.

20 Weirdest Endangered Animals

Forget the cute and cuddly endangered animal conspiracy, HERE is the low down on 20 of the weirdest endangered animals, including the Aye Aye above.

Eco-friendly driving

Hummer comes out with new more eco-friendly version that gets to the root of the problem. Listen to audio HERE.

Sheyl, I promise this won't give you an aneurysm.

"Welcoming Homer the Tree-Hugger"

George Meyer on the environmental movement:

"Great clouds of hypocrisy swirl around me. But even a fraud has feelings. And this summer, I'm feeling uneasy; I'm starting to think that our culture's frenzied and mindless assault on the last shreds of nature may not be the wisest course.

True, when you go for a stroll on a Sunday afternoon, nothing seems amiss. But as we know from horror movies, that's exactly when the giant alien embryos come blasting out of the sidewalk."

The entire op-ed on BBC is quite good...

Environmental Impacts

Bottom trawling as seen from space. This is a view of the track marks left by bottom trawling for fish in the Gulf of Mexico. They guy in the article calculated that yearly we disturb a land area in the ocean roughly the size of the lower 48 states. This is another compelling reason to make sure the fish you eat is sustainable (and hopefully these effects are included in the sustainability analysis).

Green Cities

Check out this article listing America's top 50 greenest cities.

Year of the Frog

"The Association of Zoos and Aquariums will highlight 2008 as the Year of the Frog to mark a major conservation effort to address the amphibian extinction crisis."