Can memory save elephants from climate change disruption?

Charles Foley of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York and colleagues wondered if any of the surviving elephants had remembered the previous drought.

The researchers looked at how the deaths broke down by sex and clan structure. They found that of three clans, two migrated from the region during the drought, presumably to seek food and water. Their strategy seems to have paid off: the groups that left lost five calves between them, whereas the group that stayed lost 11 of its 27 calves.

California uses more gasoline than China

So, more than any other country in the world. But China will overtake soon.

Flipswap -- trade in your cell phone

Get store credit, cash in online, donate to charity, or recycle.

Uh oh. Problems with the service.

Extremophile microbes

The Berkeley Pit [an abandoned open pit mine] had become one of the deadliest places on earth, too toxic even for microorganisms. Or so it was thought.
In 1995, an analytic chemist named William Chatham saw something unusual in the allegedly lifeless lake: a small clump of green slime floating on the water's surface. He snagged a sample and brought it to biologist Grant Mitman at the nearby Montana Tech campus of the University of Montana, where Mitman found to his amazement that the goop was a mass of single-celled algae...
For reasons that are not entirely clear, many compounds which attack cancer cells are also harmful to brine shrimp, therefore most modern assay tests include the brine shrimp lethality test as a standard procedure. The Stierles exposed swarms of tiny crustacean volunteers to the Berkeley Pit chemicals, and to their delight, five of the chemicals showed anti-cancer properties.

Beef and dairy farming leave much bigger carbon footprint than food transport

Final delivery leg not as important as production practices.

Sea level rise map

Uses a Google map to show degree of effect.

Climate science maverick James Lovelock says we're too late

Global warming has passed the tipping point, and catastrophe is unstoppable. "It's just too late for it," he says. "Perhaps if we'd gone along routes like that in 1967, it might have helped. But we don't have time. All these standard green things, like sustainable development, I think these are just words that mean nothing.

Paper vs. styrofoam cups

A study by Canadian scientist Martin Hocking shows that making a paper cup uses as much petroleum or natural gas as a polystyrene cup. Plus, the paper cup uses wood pulp. The Canadian study said, ‘The paper cup consumes 12 times as much steam, 36 times as much electricity, and twice as much cooling water as the plastic cup.’ And because the paper cup uses more raw materials and energy, it also costs 2.5 times more than the plastic cup.

3-day fog killed at least a couple of thousand in London (1880)

Happened a few times before and after. In 1952, one killed about 4000.

How Denmark kicked its foreign oil habit

Being 99% dependent on foreign oil back in '73 forced them to change things around.

Avoiding left hand turns saves fuel

All that idling adds up if you have a fleet the size of UPS's.

Worry about the worst gas guzzlers

You save more fuel switching from a 15 to 18 mpg car than switching from a 50 to 100 mpg car, because of this relationship. Going for the fuel sipping higher end is less important than getting the hogs off the road, where the gains would be largest. Easier to assess properly with fuel used per unit distance.

Fighting what's good for us -- how removing lead from fuel took a while

The title links to a short article on the catalytic converter. Here is a longer lead-up to that and how companies are really not looking out for the public good. It appears that we're too satisfied with official lines that sound pleasing. On the guy who started noticing things after the government dropped the ball:

For a time thereafter, Patterson found himself ostracized from government and corporate sponsored research projects, including the a National Research Council panel on atmospheric lead contamination. The Ethyl corporation had powerful friends, including a Supreme Court justice, members of the US Public Health Service, and the mighty American Petroleum Institute.

How It All Ends -- cornered by reason into action on global warming

The rational breakdown of why we should take global warming seriously right now. Thanks to Brian.

Interactive map of nuclear reactors and safety problems

Moving a cursor over and/or clicking on a reactor will bring up more in-depth information about each reactor, including owner and licensing dates; local population; past and present safety issues; UCS letters to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC); and testimony to Congress.

UNEP bringing solar power into India's rural mainstream

Well, rather than burning all that kerosene for indoor lighting microfinancing is allowing for photovoltaic kits to be installed.

Fusion with lasers

The extremely high temperatures at which the reaction takes place cost large amounts of energy to generate, and require magnetic containment facilities, as terrestrial materials would melt in contact with the reaction. Lasers can be used to create these temperatures efficiently, at the point of fusion, so that containment of the reaction becomes less of a problem.

Thorium fuel for reactors to avoid transuranics

Transuranics are the nuclear waste products that last tens to hundreds of thousands of years. Norway's nuclear generation is going in this direction.

Global warming concerns blown up from a bad reading of a study?

At one point, the guy points out that temps have been going down for the past three years. Then he goes on about how warming has more to do with sun cycles than human activity.
Anyways, if true, he tracks an interesting history of screwy interpretation and a meme running away.

Economics of e-waste in China

From Greenpeace:

Many of the locals have moved out of their traditional single story homes into newly built three and four storey buildings where the ground floor is reserved as a scrap-sorting workshop. Now they employ migrant workers to risk their health in this toxic business.

People's physical health is being devastated by our laziness in cleaning up our own crap. Shops that properly dispose -- versus just scavenging -- of e-waste tend to charge a fee. Ask about the end of the process. We need to lean on authorities to provide a management process or pressure industry to do it.