tagged w/ Earth and Science
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And so the green movement is being marketed to men.
Or so Audi pretends in their Superbowl ad for their TDI Diesel (which can be converted to a biodiesel if you have a station in your home town).
Ya know, I like that Audi makes TDI’s. I do.
I hate this ad.
While on the surface it almost looks like a PSA that educates about the basic environmental practices in re: to plastics, battery recycling, composting, styrofoam and water usage; after viewing it I walked away with the odd association of feeling constricted and constrained by doing all of those small daily practices for the environment. What’s up with police state over monitoring my every move? (At least I would have gotten a laugh if they had broken in on a sex seen for some un-green sex practices…that’s SuperBowl Sunday appropriate, no?)
Frankly, I walked away with an anti-green feeling and irritation towards anyone between me and my ability to do the basic little things I enjoy in life (like eating, and grocery shopping, and hot-tubbing). Look Audi, go ahead and make your cars, but don’t go and F up all the work that so many environmental organizations have been developing to promote and educate that small changes in every day life can be easy to do and can make a difference.
The need for liberation and freedom imprinted in men’s DNA (this we have been taught via car commercials) was finally accomplished by breaking out of the line and driving the open road in Audi’s “green” car. Awesome. So this wasn’t about being green, this was just about a need for speed, and escape from the entrapment of family (perhaps I’m being harsh, perhaps this is really a pro-marriage ad….maybe the real underlying message is If you only had a woman to deal with all of those domestic chores you wouldn’t get stuck in silly entrapments, hence you would ultimately have more opportunity to roam the open road…)
Bah. Enough over analyzing. It’s kind of sad that I feel the need to dig deep into this ad to find some underlying messaging. But I offer this act of mindsturbation as a favor to Audi; otherwise all that would be left to say is, 'hey look, there goes Audi greenwashing' (c’mon guys, driving a car is just plain wasteful and harmful to the environment). So do us a favor, stick to selling your cars via the messaging about freedom and liberation that comes with having a car. Leave the environmental messaging to people who..well…care.
Believe me, we’ll respect you for it in the morning.And so the green movement is being marketed to men.
Or so Audi pretends in their... more
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leahl
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1 day ago
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On my first open water dive in Hawaii I swam near a shark. Even though it demonstrated nothing but shy and skiddish behavior I couldn’t get that d#!# Jaws theme music out of my head. And for good reason, when most people hear the word shark, they think about the Great White shark, the king of the oceans, the top predator on the planet.
While attending the Ocean Film Festival this weekend I watched Requiem (while the film was too long and required patience to endure inexperienced filmmaking), it was worth it to see the awesome underwater footage as the filmmaker followed an underwater photographer from Hawaii as she familiarized herself with with the beauty, power and skills of one of the most infamous classification of sharks – the REQUIEM Family.
The film was filled with plenty of staggering facts such as three sharks are killed every second, 1 million are killed a year, and a myriad of fun comparison stats that compared shark attacks to the regular hazards on living on land such as in 1991 there were 1,300 deaths by bicycles and 4 deaths by sharks. The most staggering information was that many sharks are caught only to have their fins removed and then thrown back in the water and that while there is 350 or so species of sharks, 79 are imperiled.
Why should we care about these giants in the ocean that most of us will never come in contact with? Well…because they are what is considered a “keystone species“, in other words, they have a major influence on their entire environment. At the sustainable seafood pannel the following example was provided to illustrate the role and influence of sharks in the ecosystem: when the sharks disappear, there is an abundance of weak and diseased fish, which then influences the rate of the algae, which in turn influences the amount of oxygen in the water, which then influences the ability for all species in the area to survive. So in other words, if you want to keep eating your salmon and halibut, you might want to consider making sure that we don’t kill off all of the sharks.
How can you engage?
1. Learn more at wildaid, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Adopt A Shark, or the Shark Foundation.
2. Help get the information out to countries who are affected by the actions of their government but might not have access to the information (hello Twitter. We got a small thrill when one of our tweets about sea horse annihilation was translated and retweeted in Japanese, given that at the sustainable seafood panel one of the speakers stated that they did not have an education system in place to inform the Japanese population about the effects of the Japanese government policies).
3. Contact your local seafood restaurants and educate them about the dangers of shark fin soup. I felt a little nieve and shocked to find out that they serve shark fin soup right here in San Francisco (and if you want to get really crazy, start a campaign that educates the consumers at the restaurant about the dangers of shark fin soup).
Number of sharks that died while you read this post: approx 120
If you want to see more shark videos: check the blog post: http://blogs.current.com/green/2010/02/08/attacking-the-king-of-the-ocean-the-sharks-that-cant-fight-back-video/On my first open water dive in Hawaii I swam near a shark. Even though it demonstrated... more
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leahl
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1 day ago
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Rolling Stone decided to start the year off by kicking ass and taking numbers…or rather, announcing names and pointing fingers in their article, The Climate Killers Meet the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming.
It’s about time there was a public hit-list of people who aren’t for the planet. (After all, it’s very publicized technique used by several climate change deniers who will not be named). Over all it’s an informative article that examined the influence of thoughts, money, and action across sectors. The author clearly had fun creating clever nicknames for the offenders, such as the Flip Flopper (Dick Gephardt) and The Arm Twister (David Ratcliff). Unfortunately I found the tone of the piece off putting in the moments when it came dangerously close to stooping to name calling. The way I see it, we (the people who are actively in the pursuit of securing a way to live sustainably on the planet) do not have time for name calling. Everything that is said and written needs to be impeccable and supported by facts, not just emotion and a sense of, “this is just the right thing to do.” (I realize this is ironic coming from someone who spews nothing but opinions. Shoot. Now that I think about it, I wouldn’t be undeserving of a t-shirt that says, “Hi. My name is pot. I call tea kettles black.”)
But here’s what kills me, after an article that names some of the most dangerous polluters in regard to the environment and ideas, the first comment on the article says, “global warming is a myth.” I keep wondering what can we do to shift the conversation? HEEELLLOOO~ they just listed 17 people that are in the active pursuit of hurting the state of the planet and the entire conversation resorts to the broken record statement of “global warming is a myth”. It feels like there is no way out of the “Yes!” “No!” shouting match about the legitimacy of if climate change will affect people’s ability to survive on the planet. It is pointless to engage in a conversation about if Al Gore’s plan is to take over the planet and rule the economic system.
So (gasp), what would happen if we turned in a different direction and focused on making sure we have clean water to drink, clean air to breathe, clean soil to grow our food in? What if we replace “global warming” with “healthy planet”? Would it change the conversation? Would we still get the same number of people saying, “Healthy planet is a myth!!” And if so, how would that influence the conversation? Would it refocus us on the task at hand and give our minds a break about conspiracies, lies, and motivations?Rolling Stone decided to start the year off by kicking ass and taking... more
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leahl
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28 days ago
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The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) describes itself as the “Nation’s Scorekeeper in terms of addressing severe weather events in their historical perspective.”
“The U.S. has sustained 90 weather-related disasters over the past 29 years in which overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion. The total normalized losses for the 90 events exceed $700 billion.”
In 2008, 9 weather-related disasters topped the billion dollar mark:
"Widespread Drought Entire year, 2008. Severe drought and heat caused agricultural losses in areas of the south and west. Record low lake levels also occurred in areas of the southeast. Includes states of CA, TX, NC, SC, GA, and TN. Estimate of over $2.0 billion in damages/costs."
"Hurricane Ike September 2008. Category 2 hurricane makes landfall in Texas, as the largest (in size) Atlantic hurricane on record, causing considerable storm surge in coastal TX and significant wind and flooding damage in TX, LA, AR, IL, IN, KY, MO, OH and PA. Severe gasoline shortages occurred in the southeast US due to damaged oil platforms, storage tanks, pipelines and off-line refineries. Estimate of over $27.0 billion in damages/costs; 82 deaths; 100 people missing."
More on http://www.worldweatherpost.com/2009/04/07/billion-dollar-us-weather-disasters-in-2008/The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) describes itself as the “Nation’s... more
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Natural disasters are just that. Natural. Not spiritual. UGH!
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derk
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27 days ago
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Imagine the year 2065. Two-thirds of Earth’s ozone is gone. The infamous ozone hole over Antarctica is a year-round fixture with a twin over the North Pole.
People living in mid-latitude cities like Washington, D.C., get sunburned after five minutes. DNA-mutating UV radiation is up 650 percent, with likely harmful effects on plants, animals and human skin cancer rates.
Such is the world we would have inherited if 193 nations had not agreed to ban ozone-depleting substances, according to atmospheric chemists at NASA, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency in Bilthoven. The researchers have unveiled new computer simulations this week of a worldwide disaster that humans managed to avoid.
In retrospect, the researchers say, the Montreal Protocol was a “remarkable international agreement that should be studied by those involved with global warming and the attempts to reach international agreement on that topic.”
PHOTO: The ozone layer over the far northern hemisphere -- once robust compared to the Antarctic concentrations -- would have developed a similar ozone hole by the 2020s without the Montreal Protocol. Reds represent healthy ozone concentrations; blues show depletion. Credit: NASA GoddardImagine the year 2065. Two-thirds of Earth’s ozone is gone. The infamous ozone... more
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...a lot fatter than you used to, according to our friends at WeightWatchers - who obviously love a good PR story...
It turns out people are 18 pounds heavier than they used to be before deciding to break out the cabbage soup......a lot fatter than you used to, according to our friends at WeightWatchers - who... more
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This is the sound of the earth spinning if you listen.
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I first started hearing of Paul's work a few years ago: crazy stories about how mushrooms can heal the planet. The one thing I know for sure is that everyone who comes into contact with Paul seems a little different afterwards. My friend Andy just wrote this piece for Mother Jones....and look what happened to him. He just sent me this with a parting line, "As I experienced working on this, you may not think of mushrooms the same way again...!"
"IN THE OLD-GROWTH forests of the Pacific Northwest grows a bulbous, prehistoric-looking mushroom called agarikon. It prefers to colonize century-old Douglas fir trees, growing out of their trunks like an ugly mole on a finger. When I first met Paul Stamets, a mycologist who has spent more than three decades hunting, studying, and tripping on mushrooms, he had found only two of these unusual fungi, each time by accident—or, as he might put it, divine intervention.
Stamets believes that unlocking agarikon's secrets may be as important to the future of human health as Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillium mold's antibiotic properties more than 80 years ago. And so on a sunny July day, Stamets is setting off on a voyage along the coastal islands of southern British Columbia in hopes of bagging more of the endangered fungus before deforestation or climate change irreparably alters the ecosystems where it makes its home. Agarikon may be ready to save us—but we may have to save it first.
Joining Stamets on the 43-foot schooner Misty Isles are his wife, Dusty, a few close friends, and four research assistants from Fungi Perfecti, his Olympia, Washington-based company, which sells medicinal mushroom extracts, edible mushroom kits, mushroom doggie treats, and Stamets' most recent treatise, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World. "What we're doing here could save millions of lives," he tells me on the first morning of the three-day, 120-mile voyage. "It's fun, it's bizarre, and very much borders on something spiritual."
A few months earlier, the University of Illinois-Chicago's Institute for Tuberculosis Research sent Stamets its analysis of a dozen agarikon strains that he'd cultured in his own lab. The institute found the fungus to be extraordinarily active against XDR-TB, a rare type of tuberculosis that is resistant to even the most effective drug treatments. Project BioShield, the Department of Health and Human Services' biodefense program, has found that agarikon is highly resistant to many flu viruses including, when combined with other mushrooms, bird flu. And a week before the trip, the National Center for Natural Products Research, a federally funded lab at the University of Mississippi, concluded that it showed resistance to orthopox viruses including smallpox—without any apparent toxicity."
Check the full article.I first started hearing of Paul's work a few years ago: crazy stories about how... more
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leahl
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14 days ago
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THE WORDS OF FREEDOM THEY DON'T MAKE 'EM FREE
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An amazing new picture from space reveals a volcanic eruption in its earliest stage, with a huge plume of ash and steam billowing skyward and creating a shock wave in the atmosphere.
Sarychev Peak on Matua Island is one of the most active volcanoes in the Kuril Island chain, northeast of Japan.
The new photo was taken June 12 from the International Space Station. NASA says volcano researchers are excited about the picture "because it captures several phenomena that occur during the earliest stages of an explosive volcanic eruption."An amazing new picture from space reveals a volcanic eruption in its earliest stage,... more
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Alaska's Mt. Redoubt Volcano, which had been in a tempestuous mood for two months, erupted Sunday night at 10:38 p.m., sending an ash cloud 50,000 feet above sea level.
The Alaska Volcano Observatory recorded four more large explosions during the night. Tina Neal, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said that "so far the major population centers in south-central Alaska have been spared any kind of dusting of ash."
The enormous plume was drifting to the north over an expansive wilderness parcel and so far only the small town of Skwentna, 100 miles north of Redoubt, had reported experiencing ash fall, mixed with snow.
Neal said the duration eruptions varied from 10 to 20 minutes. The weather is cloudy and snowy at the volcano, which is located 110 miles southwest of Anchorage, due west of the Kenai Peninsula across the Cook Inlet.
Scientists will perform a fly-over today and attempt to take photographs.
The volcano last erupted in 1989-90, periodically over a period of six months, and scientists anticipate another lengthy episode.
Updates and fresh photos will be posted here as more information becomes available. Good luck to those living nearby. You might wish to take a look at the AVO's ashfall preparedness link.Alaska's Mt. Redoubt Volcano, which had been in a tempestuous mood for two... more
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leahl
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added this
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11 months ago
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Since the 1890s, surface temperatures on Earth have risen faster in the Arctic than in other regions of the world. Usually, discussions on global warming tend to focus on greenhouse gases as the culprit for the trend. But new NASA research suggests about half the atmospheric warming measured in the Arctic is due to airborne particles called aerosols.
Aerosols are emitted by both natural and human sources. They can influence climate by reflecting or absorbing sunlight. The particles also affect climate by changing cloud properties, such as reflectivity. There is one type of aerosol that, according to the study, reductions rather than increases in its emissions seem to have promoted warming.
The research team, led by climate scientist Drew Shindell of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies used a computer model to investigate how sensitive different regional climates are to changes in levels of carbon dioxide, ozone, and aerosols.
They found that Earth’s middle and high latitudes are particularly responsive to changes in aerosol levels. The model suggests aerosols likely account for 45 % or more of the warming measured in the Arctic since 1976.
Though there are several types of aerosols, previous research indicates two in particular, sulfates and black carbon, play leading roles in climate. Both are products of human activity. Sulfates, which come mainly from the burning of coal and oil, scatter sunlight and cool the air. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed clean-air laws that have halved sulfate emissions.
...Since the 1890s, surface temperatures on Earth have risen faster in the Arctic than in... more
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There have been numerous big and small earthquakes till date but the biggest earthquakes of all times had been recorded in the tape with an intensity of 9.5 on the Richter scale. In US, there has been a consistent record of earthquakes in history varying in dimension and chronology of earthquakes. Earthquakes in the US have contributed largely towards the record of earthquakes that has been listed so far globally. Here is the biggest earthquakes recorded.
http://scienceray.com/earth-sciences/biggest-earthquakes-recorded-in-history/There have been numerous big and small earthquakes till date but the biggest... more
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Researchers at the University of Florida (UF) and the University of Winnipeg have developed the first detailed images of a primitive primate brain, unexpectedly revealing that cousins of our earliest ancestors relied on smell more than sight
The analysis of a well-preserved skull from 54 million years ago contradicts some common assumptions about brain structure and evolution in the first primates, also, narrows the possibilities for what caused primates to evolve larger brain sizes.
Researchers used CT scans to take more than 1,200 cross-sectional X-ray images of the skull, which were combined into a 3-D model of the brain.
Changes in brain size and brain structure in the early stages of primate evolution have generated enormous debates for decades. But until now, fossil evidence has been lacking.Researchers at the University of Florida (UF) and the University of Winnipeg have... more
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Carl Sagan was an American astronomer and author who simultaneously advanced our understanding of astronomy and astrophysics while still presenting this incredibly complex information in a way that doesn't make your brain hurt.
In 1980, Sagan teamed with PBS and produced "Cosmos" which eventually became the most popular series in the history of public broadcasting. After I watched a few episodes I could see why.
http://www.hulu.com/cosmosCarl Sagan was an American astronomer and author who simultaneously advanced our... more
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Open your lungs and talk to the Moon!
A massive project to bounce voices from Earth to the moon and back to another spot on Earth will be launched June 26. Several former astronauts and other famous people have signed on, and so can one lucky Wired Science reader.
The impulse to hear your own echo probably goes back to early humans shouting into canyons. Now, the World Moon Bounce will expand the range and audience of echoes to commemorate the astronauts who first talked from the moon, and offers regular folks a chance to visit the moon — at least vocally.Open your lungs and talk to the Moon!
A massive project to bounce voices from Earth... more
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Wade Davis will be in town tomorrow speaking at the Long Now lecture series on “The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World“. We’re going to have a chance to get your questions to Wade, so you know what to do: ask away!
Here is what TED has to say about why he is worth listening to:
Anthropologist Wade Davis is perhaps the most articulate and influential western advocate for the world’s indigenous cultures. His stunning photographs and evocative stories capture the viewer’s imagination. As a speaker, he parlays that sense of wonder into passionate concern over the rate at which cultures and languages are disappearing — 50 percent of the world’s 6,000 languages, he says, are no longer taught to children. He argues, in the most beautiful terms, that language isn’t just a collection of vocabulary and grammatical rules. In fact, “Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind.”
Davis, a Harvard-educated ethnobotanist, believes humanity’s greatest legacy is the “ethnosphere,” the cultural counterpart to the biosphere, and “the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness.” He beautifully articulates the intellectual, emotional and moral reasons why it’s in everyone’s best interest to preserve the world’s cultures.
To this end, Davis serves on the councils of Ecotrust and other NGOs working to protect diversity. He also co-founded Cultures on the Edge, a quarterly online magazine designed to raise awareness of threatened communities. Perhaps his best-known work is The Serpent and the Rainbow,The Clouded Leopard: A Book of Travels. an international bestseller about zombification practices in Haiti. Wes Craven adapted the book into a 1988 film, which Davis denounced as a betrayal of the book’s spirit.
So post your questions below. We will also be live tweeting from the sold out lecture on Wednesday, 7:30pm-9pm PST.Wade Davis will be in town tomorrow speaking at the Long Now lecture series on... more
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leahl
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28 days ago
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We all feel good when we look good. However, as we age, our skin starts losing its tightness and elasticity. Not only does our skin reflect the sign of ageing, our body, too, joins in the process. As we age, our fitness levels start dropping and we get tired easily. So are we going to just sit back and be upset that we are ageing? We have a way to grow old but stay fit at the same time. The key to it is exercising regularly from an early age.
http://healthmad.com/fitness/regular-exercise-will-prolong-your-life-and-fitness/We all feel good when we look good. However, as we age, our skin starts losing its... more
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A robotic vehicle named Nereus has made one of the deepest ocean dives ever — 6.8 miles (10,902 meters), a team of scientists and engineers reported yesterday. At this depth, Nereus was able to explore the Challenger Deep — the ocean's lowest point, located in the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific.
more in the link...A robotic vehicle named Nereus has made one of the deepest ocean dives ever —... more
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