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Josh Fox sets out to learn the truth about fracking, uncovering "a trail of secrets, lies and contamination". Excellent film.
Our Earth summer 2010 internship program- application deadline April 30. (OurEarth.org)
Earth Portal
Build your own Earth Portal community. (Earth Portal)
Ecoversity: Recent Press
Transitions Radio Interview 5/12/10: Ecoversity's Jeff Harbour with Alan Hutner for Transitions Radio (to be broadcast on KBAC 98.1FM) (listen)
Santa Fe Free Press 1/22/09:
"A Hands on Campus" (pdf)
Santa Fe New Mexican 11/28/08:
"A New Energy Frontier"
KSFR: Diego Mulligan Interviews
- March 24 2009: Diego interviews Andrew Fikiforuk, author of Tar Sands
-Interview with Ecoversity's RP Harbour and Willem Malten, 12/30/08 (mp3)
-Interview with Alphonz Viszolay 12/16/08 (mp3)
Google Earth
Download Google Earth and explore our planet and biosphere like never before!
Home - the Movie
Yann Arthus-Bertrand, celebrated French journalist, photographer and environmentalist, has created an extraordinarily beautiful film of our home planet, and the impacts our species has made upon it's life systems. "Home" can be seen in high quality full screen mode here.
E.O. Wilson Interview
NYTimes' David Pogue interviewed E.O.Wilson at length about
the Encyclopedia of Life during the production of a CBS feature on the project; here is the complete interview transcript: Pogue/Wilson
$50 Billion Would Save the Rest of Life
"Seems like a bargain"- E.O. Wilson
(view LinkTV interview)
And here is TED prize curator Chris Anderson interviewed on Charlie Rose
Browse Encyclopedia of Life's album of favorite images submitted to the EOL FLICKR contest. (here)
Green Map: Tools for Open Source Mapping of Environmental Data
Download free endangered species ringtones from the Center for Biological Diversity
TED Conference videos:
A Greener Future
Inspired by Nature
Animals That Amaze
Evolution's Genius
Predictions/Warnings
Clean Tech Recruits
500 clean-tech job postings daily (site)
StopDodo is a "global portal for environmental jobs and resumes" (site)
Green Jobs Links Boards:
EcoJobsOnline.com
GreenJobsToday.com
Meatrix: The Saga Continues
Solar Installation Links:
SolarInstallations.info
SolarConversion.info
PDF Downloads
State of the Climate 2009
Soil Health & Sustainability
Copenhagen Accord
Escape From Copenhagen
Soil Health & Sustainability
Obama' COP15 speech
UNEP: Environmental Food Crisis
2009 Climate Sci Compendium
WWF Arctic Feedbacks Report
Arctic Feedbacks Exec Sum
AMAP Climate 2009
Happy Planet Index 2.0
Pathways Low-Carbon Economy
Arctic Monitoring 2009
State of Polar Research
Limits of Organic Life
Soil Ecology
UNCCD BioChar Report
Living Planet Report
Monaco Declaration
State of the Oceans
EOL Newsletter #5
EOL Newsletter #4
EOL Newsletter #3
EOL Newsletter #2
Ecoversity: News, Links and Resources
If you would like to suggest a particular site, or alert us to follow-up articles, use this email
World Still Heating Up
After those icy blasts and heavy snows of last winter, which seemed to drain away whatever momentum had remained after the Copenhagen fiasco, concern about climate change fell to the bottom of the list of the US public's worries. Newsweek, in "A Green Retreat": "Increasingly, the whole concept of radical, top-down global targets is coming under scrutiny as citizens and governments face tougher choices over costs and benefits.. . . With green politics losing its moral high ground, there is a growing realization that climate change is just one policy priority among many that compete for limited resources and attention. That means, first, that climate politics will likely fall off its pedestal of being the Western worlds overarching priority. . . adaptation may offer equally valid and much less expensive choices than cutting back on emissions. For example, one of the most-feared effects of warming is rising sea levels- yet mankind has successfully dealt with similar rises for centuries. 'As soon as you start talking to Dutch engineers, you realize that sea-level rise is business as usual,' says Geden. . . . Another emerging area of innovation is climate engineering, such as the manipulation of cloud cover and other artificial means of reflecting heat back into space."
So by Newsweek's account, we can just about forget about curbing CO2 emissions and averting significant climate change; we should rather invest in big engineering projects to protect us from the unavoidable consequences of our profligacy. Music to the ears of the big multinational energy and engineering firms.
Well now it's summer in the North, and we're on our second, or is it third, heat wave in two months. It used to be that mid-nineties for a few days was a heat wave. Now it's when we go triple digits. And we've got record-breaking heat on the East Coast, in Brazil, in Southern China, and in Europe where the heat is causing crops to wither, forest fires to ignite and roads to melt, trains were down, a
tornado hit an island in the North Sea, and Dutch dykes were weakening.
Moscow, Aug 6: 5000 are dead in the worst Russian heat wave ever; Moscow is shrouded in smoke as forest fires rage. . . (Aug 6 report).
Moscow, July 31: Russia's hottest summer in history: Moscow temperatures over 100 degrees F this week, wildfires out of control, 240,000 acres burning 1000 homes destroyed, state of emergency in 27 regions. (report)
All in all, the first 6 months of 2010 were the warmest on record, and June was the warmest month on record; and we haven't finished with this very hot July yet.
So maybe now we can get back to worrying about climate change? By mid September we'll have the latest figures on the shrinking Arctic sea-ice, usually the seasonal climax of warming worries; hopefully we can get something done before the return of winter, and forgetting . .
Meanwhile, "Rescue workers and troops in northwest Pakistan struggled Saturday to reach thousands of people affected by the country's worst floods in living memory, as the death toll passes 1500. . . The floods came after what meteorologists described as an "unprecendented" 12 inches of rain fell in just 36 hours. . . whole villages have been washed away. . . The destruction is massive. . . " (report)
China: Worst floods in a decade
Los Angeles County state of emergency
August 7: A Massive ice island broke off Greenland's Peterman glacier, four times the size of Manhattan (report)
More climate change news:
It has been discovered that sea ice works like a giant gas pump, pumping CO2 into the ocean.
". . . researchers have found that. . . as sea ice forms, it rejects brine, rich in inorganic carbon compounds (derived from atmospheric CO2), into the underlying seawater, a process further stimulated by carbonate precipitation within the sea ice. The summer sea ice melt liberates water which is strongly depleted in CO2. The very low concentration of CO2 in this surface water then drives the extraordinary uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere."
As sea-ice cover recedes, this pump is being shut down. (Arctic sea ice pumps 50% more carbon dioxide into the oceans)
FYI: Climate Change Has Begun
Largest hailstones ever seen hit a South Dakota town. . . world-record kilo-size hailstones smash through car windows, rooftops. . . (report)
Blistering heat expected in Northeast; A heat wave of historic proportions
Forecasts suggest that this year the amount of ice in the Arctic is likely to retreat to its lowest extent on record
Mexico town evacuated as dam threatens to overflow
Flash Floods Shut Down Milwaukee Airport
Beijing: Officials fear floods, strained reinforcements
Russia suffering worst drought in 130 years
Russians and Their Crops Wilt Under Heat Wave
Hemorrhagic Fever Cases at All Time High in Bali
Hundreds of severe weather reports in northeast and midwest
United Flight Turbulence Injures 30 On Dulles-LA Flight, Emergency Landing In Denver
Southwest Flight Diverted After Turbulence, Attendant Hospitalized
Dutch heat wave raises dyke safety concerns
Dead Pool- Imagining the Future of the American Southwest
Heat Waves and Energy Crunches: the Future is Now
Rivers of Ice: Vanishing Glaciers of the Greater Himalaya Asia Society Exhibit, photos and videos
Methane Releases from Arctic Shelf May Be Much Larger and Faster Than Anticipated
ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2010) A section of the Arctic Ocean seafloor that holds vast stores of frozen methane is showing signs of instability and widespread venting of the powerful greenhouse gas, according to the findings of an international research team. . .
Methane releases in arctic seas could wreak devastation
Massive releases of methane from arctic seafloors could create oxygen-poor dead zones, acidify the seas and disrupt ecosystems in broad parts of the northern oceans, new preliminary analyses suggest.
Such a cascade of geochemical and ecological ills could result if global warming triggers a widespread release of methane from deep below the Arctic seas, scientists propose in the June 28 Geophysical Research Letters.
Biofuel boom exacerbating climate change
Forget petroleum. The next planet-destroying fuel is already here."
"Biodiesel emits less than one-quarter the carbon of regular diesel once it's burned. But when production- and the destruction of ecosystems in the developing countries where most biofuel crops are grown- is factored in, many biofuels may actually emit more carbon than does petroleum, the journal Science reported last year. Because oil palms don't absorb as much CO2 as the rainforest or peatlands they replace, palm oil can generate as much as 10 times more carbon than petroleum, according to the advocacy group Food First.
Thanks in large part to oil palm plantations, Indonesia is now the world's third-largest emitter of CO2, trailing only the US and China.
Yet Indonesia aims to expand these plantations from 16 million acres currently to almost 26 million by 2015. If deforestation, which is due largely to oil palm, continues at the present rate, 98 percent of the country's forest- one of only a handful of large rainforests remaining in the world- will be degraded or gone by 2022."
-Heather Rogers for Mother Jones (article)
Heather Rogers is the author of "Green Gone Wrong". GritTV's Laura Flanders interviewed Heather and Gwynn Dyer, author of "Climate Wars" on the geopolitical ramifications of global warming: (watch video)
Driving a plug-in hybrid in much of the United States will not reduce CO2 emissions, since electricity in many parts of the country is generated predominantly by coal-burning plants; the electricity for the hybrids can generate more CO2 than burning gasoline. See Scientific American's interactive report online: The Dirty Truth About Plug-in Hybrids
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| Watch a video about an ecological pool in the French Alps ski resort of Combloux. |
Get a chlorine-free break from the heat with a natural swimming pool
Natural swimming pools began in Europe over 20 years ago. Today there are over 20,000 installed in Europe.
These kinds of bio-pools work on a
balanced natural principle of regeneration using flora and fauna to keep the water oxygenated using flora and fauna to keep the water oxygenated and reduce the built up of harmful algae. A wall is constructed between the regeneration area and the swimming area.
A natural swimming pool eliminates completely the need for chemicals and constant cleaning because its biological cleaning process is complete. The food and the impurities of surplus, as well as the harmful bacteria, are transformed by plants and water organisms.
Googling 'natural swimming pools', 'bio-pools', or 'ecological swimming pools' will give you a number of small companies and landscape/builders in the States and abroad which can help you make your bio-pool.
Stephanie Smith Update
Readers will remember the New York Times reportage on safety in the food industry, focussing on Stephanie Smith, who was paralyzed after eating a hamburger. (see Case Focus: Food Safety). Michael Moss won a Pulitzer for the reporting on this case; here he speaks at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco about the investigation: watch the video
World Peoples' Summit on Climate Change and Rights of Mother Earth
Earth Day, 2010.
Democracy Now has been broadcasting this week from Tiquipaya, Bolivia, the site of the 'World Peoples' Summit on Climate Change and Rights of Mother Earth', hosted by Bolivian President Evo Morales, who declared "This is a movement. It is a first step to mobilize the whole world, to search for another kind of civilization, another kind of relationship with nature." See Democracy Now's complete coverage, including many interviews, posted in Case Focus.
A Greener Empire?
Brigadier General Steven Anderson (Ret.), Chief of Logistics in Iraq under General David Petraeus, calls for the U.S. Senate to pass a Clean Energy plan: "Our troops are getting killed moving fuel we wouldn't need if our military was more efficient- and our enemies know we're hooked on their oil. That's why breaking our addiction must not only be a military priority, but America's mission, and why the Senate needs to pass a clean energy climate plan."
(watch the video)
We tend to lump green energy together with economic reform and social justice, peace, and all the rest. However, 'green energy' can serve the interests of more efficient Empire, as this testimonial from Brig. Gen'l Stevens shows.
We will soon have solar-powered predator drones too. See "Research on Solar-Powered Air Force Drones Takes Off"
Latest on the Gulf Disaster: July 13
An informative update on the Gulf disaster from McClatchy Bureau's Mark Seibel. A 'dramatic moment' is in progress. The previous cap, which collected 20-30% of the oil and gas flow, will be removed, allowing 100% flow until a new cap is put in place in several days which can capture potentially all of the oil flow. The risk here is that the pressure building inside the capped well may cause eruptions through the bore walls into the intermediate sub-surface strata- which may later destabilize, allowing potentially widespread and uncontrollable further leakage.
Update July 14: Afraid of precisely that scenario, the latest cap effort has been stopped pending further analysis.
"BP's work to cap its Gulf of Mexico gusher was in limbo Wednesday after the federal government raised concerns the operation could put damaging pressure on the busted well and make the leak worse." (story)
Update 2: Feds give go ahead, BP resumes cap testing. . . "We will start to increase pressure in capping stack in 6 hr intervals to review pressure data as well as sonar & acoustic data." -Adm Allen (report)
BP has admitted that the well-bore is damaged and 'leaking' 1000 feet below the seafloor; relief well drilling also stopped; fears of large scale destabilization of seafloor mount (see Doomsday: How BP Gulf disaster may have triggered a 'world-killing' event)
Rumours BP is preparing an EMFCG- (Explosive Magnetic Flux Compression Generator), probably powered with a small nuclear weapon, to seal the seafloor. (report) (LANL PDF: EMFCG weapon) (EMFCG PDF 2)
Updates July 18-19: The U.S. government released a letter to BP Chief Managing Director Bob Dudley from retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen that referred to an unspecified type of seepage near the mile-deep (1.6 km-deep) well along with "undetermined anomalies at the well head."
"I direct you to provide me a written procedure for opening the choke valve as quickly as possible without damaging the well should hydrocarbon seepage near the well head be confirmed," Allen wrote.
BP did not respond to requests for comment on Allen's letter. (report)
July 19: The White House says the well is leaking at the top and a seep is 2 miles away. (report)
July 23: Oil and methane seeps downplayed, cap tightened, all ships leave the area as TD Bonnie heads to Gulf.
Un Cri de Coeur from Rep. Dennis Kucinich:
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Funeral of a Much-Loved Chimpanzee
"Her presence, and loss, was palpable, and resonated throughout the group. The management at Sanaga-Yong opted to let Dorothy's chimpanzee family witness her burial, so that perhaps they would understand, in their own capacity, that Dorothy would not return" (story, Nat Geo)
Evidence Points to Conscious 'Metacognition' in Some Nonhuman Animals
Scientists have determined that animals "may share humans' ability to reflect upon, monitor or regulate their states of mind". (story)
This represents a great leap for the human mind! (so when do we stop the slaughter?) -Ed
Previous Links and Resources Pages: May-July 2010 / Jan-Apr 2010 / Sept-Oct 2009 / May-Aug 2009 / March-April 2009 / Dec-Feb 2009 / July-August 2008 / May-June 2008 / March-April 2008
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2010 Year of Biodiversity
UN General Secretary Ban-Ki Moon announces The Year of Biodiversity 2010.
watch video
James Hansen's Latest
NASA's top climate scientist on his new book, 'Storms of My Grandchildren' watch here
Update: Hansen's response to Obama's offshore drilling announcement
Santa Fe Institute Videos
The Santa Fe Institute is now presenting SFI video lectures on their website. Recently posted: The Architecture of Biodiversity with Jordi Bascompte, and The Decline of Classic Maya Civilization: A Systems Perspective, with Jeremy Sabloff (view listings)
2012 Edible Gardens Project
2012 Edible Albuquerque Gardens is now ready to launch. Help us inspire others with your efforts to grow even a small portion of your own food! (website and registration)
The Impossible Hamster
The absurdity of unending growth
June 2: Diego Mulligan interviewed James Lovelock, originator of Gaia Theory, about the state of the planet now. He's not optimistic. But at 90 something, he's going into low orbit on Richard Branson's Spaceship 2 this fall from New Mexico to have a look. (podcast)
Lovelock- Follow-up Interview with Diego Mulligan on KSFR starting Friday June 12th at 5:05 pm. (more info)
Envirolink Forums
Envirolink was the first big environmental hub on the web in the mid-nineties, and is still now a tremendous resource. Envirolink.org
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