Archive for the 'Environment' Category
Dirt: The Silent Global Crisis
September 1st, 2007The most disturbing thing that I notice about New Zealand is soil erosion. Many farms in the Far North are shockingly overstocked and erosion is, quite simply, washing the deforested land out to sea. This isn’t some far out theory. I see it happening. It doesn’t take much rain to turn the Oruru river brown […]
“Green Confessions” to Help Eco-Sinners Find Forgiveness
August 31st, 2007Will the Church sell carbon offset indulgences? Hmm. Saint Gore? Via: Times Online: Forgotten to recycle any newspapers or tin cans recently? Feeling guilty because you neglected to carbon offset your flight to somewhere, anywhere, outside England this summer? The Roman Catholic Church is at hand with a new line in “green confessions†to help […]
Joel Salatin and Polyface Farms
August 30th, 2007For me, comprehension of the way industrial scale (including “Organic”) food worked was the last straw. Many aspects of politics and society are disturbing, but toxic—and or long distance—food isn’t some theoretical, far out, future threat. The wolf is at the door. It’s right here, right now. The food issue, more than anything else, drove […]
German Physicists on the Carbon Theory Behind Global Warming
August 5th, 2007Comments on this post are open only to university physics professors. If you are a university physics professor and would like to comment on this paper, send me a private email from your university email account and I will be happy to post your comment. These will be on-the-record comments. Your name will be included. […]
The Chinese “Miracle” Will End Soon [sic]
August 4th, 2007Yesterday wouldn’t be soon enough. Via: Spiegel: The world has been dazzled in recent years by the economic strides being made by China. But it has come at a huge cost to the country’s environment. Pollution is a serious and costly problem. Pan Yue of the ministry of the environment says these problems will soon […]
BP Gets OK to Dump Mercury into Lake Michigan
July 31st, 2007Via: USA Today: A BP refinery in Indiana will be allowed to continue to dump mercury into Lake Michigan under a permit issued by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. The permit exempts the BP plant at Whiting, Ind., 3 miles southeast of Chicago, from a 1995 federal regulation limiting mercury discharges into the Great […]
UK Floods: Looting, Panic Buying – and a Water Shortage
July 23rd, 2007Via: Times Online: Food and drinking water shortages, panic buying and the threat of looting have followed the worst flooding to hit England in 60 years. Amid concerns that the government-run Environment Agency acted far too slowly in responding to serious flood alerts from the Met Office, parts of the West Country woke up this […]
Ice-Cream Makers Frozen Out as Corn Price Rises
July 18th, 2007HAHA! Did you hear the one about Dow 14,000? HAHA! Tell me another one. Via: Times Online: What’s the connection between ethanol, the biofuel produced from corn, and a cherry vanilla ice-cream? Answer: the first is responsible for pushing up the price of the other. This month, the price of milk in the United States […]
The Ants of Gaia
July 9th, 2007Joe doesn’t seem to acknowledge the kill off of the die off, but I’m not sure that it matters anymore. Via: Joe Bageant: The hearts of even our most avowedly thriving cities are just a dead, reduced to nothing more than designated spending zones, collections of bars and banks and overpriced eateries lodged at the […]
China Exporting Ecological Disaster to the World
July 8th, 2007Via: Spiegel: Can the environment withstand China’s growing economic might? As one of the planet’s worst polluters, Beijing’s ecological sins are creating problems on a global scale. Many countries are now feeling the consequences.
