Oh the ecstasy

David Roberts rants. My heart skips a beat. I am transported to a happy place where there are intelligent, funny, environmentally-awake people all around. Then I realize: it’s Grist Magazine. OH WAIT…maybe it’s starting to be the entire world…only starting, but perhaps…

Lebanese Oil Spill

So, remember that oil spill (caused by Israeli bombs…go Israel…) that is the worst environmental disaster the Mediterranean has ever experienced? Well, here‘s the Lebanese Environmental Ministry’s take on it, from their site. It also has a good map, albeit without showing the spill’s spread out to sea.

Lots of links

Organized by where they’re from:

Treehugger:

Walmart leaves Germany by Christine Lepisto

Wave power in Oregon by Jeff McIntire-Strasburg

Christmas Trees add to Global Warming by Lloyd Alter

Gristmill:

Carbon trading in the news by Jason D Scorse

Hugg:

Bacteria Power

Lebanon oil slick is the worst environmental disaster the Mediterranean has ever had.

The benefits of Chest fridge/freezers

WorldChanging:

This Week in Sustainable Mobility by Mike Millikin

Environmentalism entering mainstream politics in the UK, by Hana Loftus

Solar farm in Germany

This is a heartwarming story of a family pig farm in Germany confronted with economic hardship brought on by global economics, who transformed their farm into a solar plant, and now make about $600,000 per year producing electricity for their village. From the New York Times via Treehugger.

Is Local food necessarily better?

This article linked to by Treehugger raises an interesting point. There are many instances in which buying local food is less energy efficient or socially responisble than buying imported food. Treehugger also mentions the book “The Way We Eat” by Peter Singer, which especially caught my eye. Yay environmental philosophy!

No-electricity Ice Cream!

I scream, you scream, we all scream for no-energy ice cream! And the device only costs about $45! I thought that was going to be less, but the conversion from UK pounds has gotten a little steeper since the last time I did it… via Treehugger.

Israel, get your head straightened

So, it appears that the Israeli bombs in Lebanon have done more than kill lots of civilians and destroy lots of infrastructure. Because that stuff’s okay by the current rules of war, right? But is it okay to sink oil tankers, causing oil spills along the country’s coast? Maybe they think it is, but wait a sec…isn’t the Israeli coast close to the Lebanese coast? Perhaps even adjacent? So, if you’re destroying oil tankers on Lebanon’s coast with your bombs, do you think that might mean the oil spill might spread to your beautiful shores? I suppose not. I guess fishermen in the Holy Land will have to look elsewhere…

Fit hitting the shan in the Amazon

So…problems in the Amazon. Trees take in carbon dioxide and emit oxygen, right? A lot of really big trees do a lot of this process, right? We’ve got a lot of really big trees doing this in the Amazon, right, and those are here to stay, yeah? Well…

There are some people, motivated by totally righteous financial and economic reasons, who grow crops and livestock, and some who harvest timber for you to build your house and other stuff with. Some of these people live, work, or order around people who work, in South America. Where are there a lot of trees to harvest in South America? The Amazon rainforest. And those other people don’t mind the deforestation either; they use the land for growing crops and keeping livestock. Sometimes they don’t even wait for the trees to be cut down, and they just burn them.

Now, there are a lot of things these days that are making it hotter, and in some parts of the world, things that are making it drier. El Nino. Climate change. Burning trees (that makes smoke). These things all make the Amazon Basin hotter and drier. What happens when a rainforest is faced with unparalleled drought? Well, it just so happens that the good people at Wood’s Hole Research Center have been studying just that. Their findings aren’t fun. Basically, after 3 years or so, all those big trees that help us so much with our CO2 and oxygen, those trees start to die. And when the biggest ones die, they expose the smaller ones to more sunlight, and thus more heat and drying. So it’s an accelerating process, is what that means. So, they start dying en masse after about 3 years? Guess how long there’s been a drought in the Amazon now? I hear about 2 years.

Of course, it’s a big place, and it isn’t the same everywhere, but still. That such acceleration-prone forces are in place at all, that this is just going on as it has been, seems to me somewhat disrespectful. Disrespectful to ourselves, each other, and most of all to our children. And their children, etc.

Oh, another thing. The “savannization” that would occur if a lot of these trees died actually does happen, it would reduce unthinkable amount of carbon into the atmosphere. We’re talking the equivalent of several years of worldwide emissions. That’s enough to speed global warming by 50%, according to whoever Hugged this link.

So as I said, the fit is hitting the shan. And what are you doing about that?

Mmm, Grist

A couple posts from Grist and the Gristmill.

Barack Obama is such a great lead photo. This article, though, is about the bill he’s leading the push for that would raise fuel-economy standards.

The Wichita (Kansas) Eagle had an article recently about how the increased atmospheric heat from glabal warming will cause more turbulence, which means, you guessed it, more storms. In the Plains, I guess that means more tornadoes. To quote our funny friends at Grist: Hunker down, Dorothy.

That’s it for now.