Green Daily

We may all be flying a little less in these financially tight times, but we also may be looking for cheaper ways to fly when we have to get somewhere far away. In my case, buddy passes from friends who work for airlines have allowed me to travel more than I could have otherwise.

I was talking to one of those friends recently, who said that when she calculated her carbon footprint, she didn't count her standby flights: the planes would fly anyway, she said, and plus, it would make her carbon footprint huge.

If I took my standby flights out of by carbon footprint calculation, my footprint would go down several thousand pounds of C02. What do you think? Is flying standby greener?

This should not be a news item, but it has been popping up on green news sites and pages all over in the last couple of days.

The EPA has said that greenhouse gases are dangerous to our health. They've said it before. But this time, it appears the White House is listening. This means that we can officially start regulating greenhouse gases, which has not always been a priority of the nation's leadership.

Some lawmakers have already been working on carbon cap-and-trade CO2 program, which would require polluters to buy permits according to the amount of pollution they release into the atmosphere.

The move is already producing warnings from some legislators, who are worried about the massive amount of regulations on businesses that could result. This is explained further over at Bloomberg. Either way, we're going to be hearing a lot more about greenhouse gases in the coming days and months.

A group called Responsible Policies for Animals, Inc. this week sent letters to the governors of every state asking that land grant universities get out of the meat industry.

The group, who sell a bumper sticker proclaiming "They're sentient beings, not food choices" says that the entire meat industry is environmentally destructive.

The letter criticizes the academic course of study frequently called "animal science" which, according to RPA, teaches students to slaughter animals and make ice cream, among other things. The founder of the group, Eric Cantor, says that animal science "rejects scientific knowledge that humans are herbivores."

My only experience with animal science courses were those taken by friends preparing to be veterinarians (most of which are distinctly not planning on slaughtering animals for a living), but I know that there is also money in the livestock industry, as well as education in that arena. I'm not sure how successful this campaign will be, though. What do you think?

A recent study in the journal Nature finds evidence that a prehistoric fish was the first to reproduce by fertilization inside the female.

The fossilized fish is over 350 million years old, and though the fossil has been in the hands of the Natural History Museum in London for years, scientists recently decided that a smaller skeleton inside the fossil was not a last meal, but instead was a developing baby fish.

This finding is important because until fairly recently, scientists thought that the predominant form of reproduction this long ago was external-- the female laying eggs in the water, where they would then be fertilized by the male. Instead, it seems that the more advanced process of viviparity-- reproducing internally-- has been around for quite a while. No word yet on how much fun these fish had with their newfound activity.

Recent research says that tropical forests are absorbing more C02 than we thought they were.

The study reports that trees within forests across Africa are getting bigger, and also trapping more C02 per year that original estimates. Researchers warn that although right now the forests are taking on more C02, and more of the burden of carbon emissions, their absorption capabilities are not unlimited.

The New York Times' John Tierney recently reported on a list of strategies from Wired Magazine for cutting carbon emissions, one of which is to plant and grow lots of young trees in place of older trees, as young ones absorb more C02. You might say that such a plan would fail to see the forest for the trees. A stand of farmed, identically aged young trees just isn't as pretty as a diversified ecosystem.

I think it might be a good idea to plant more trees, of course, but I'd hate to see giant old redwoods like the one in the photo fall for a little more carbon capture.

Dr. James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, will lead a national day of civil disobedience at the Capitol Power Plant on March 2, 2009.

In the video below, Dr. Goddard says that he thinks its time we take a stand on climate change, and that our current rate of use of fossil fuels cannot continue. That's why the action will be at the coal plant that powers the nation's capitol.

Ashley Judd says enough's enough when it comes to a coal mining practice called mountaintop removal.

Though the actress seems to be advocating for a lot of different causes these days. this particular industry has a stronghold in her home state of Kentucky, and the Appalachian mountains that surround it. She has said that coal mining itself is not as bad as this particular method of extracting coal.

Advocates of the practice claim that one of its benefits is the creation of more flat land, while many opponents think that the ratio of coal extracted to the amount of damage done to the mountains is an unacceptable cost. Not only are tops of mountains sheared off (as well as topsoil and vegetation), but the runoff and erosion can affect rivers and streams in surprising ways.

There's been another oil spill, this time off the coast of Ireland, in the Celtic Sea. Irish officials are monitoring the movement of the slick, as they are currently unsure of how much may come ashore.

Boats from several countries are now at the site of the spill, which is currently being credited to two Russian ships, an aircraft carrier and an oil tanker

Here's a more extensive article on the spill, though it quotes Russian officials as saying the spill poses no ecological danger. Yeah, I agree. I mean, what kind of damage could 500 tons of oil do in the ocean? Russian officials also dispute the amount of oil spilled; media reports have estimated the spill at up to 500 tons, while officials claim the spill is closer to 12 tons.

The BBC reports that at least one American scientist thinks we don't have to leave home to find aliens.

"We don't have to go to other planets to find weird life. It could be right in front of our noses - or even in our noses," the BBC quotes Paul Davies, an Arizona State University scientist, as saying.

At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Davies called scientists to start looking in "hostile environments"-- places like Mono Lake, which has a heavy arsenic load, or deep ocean vents -- for overlooked alien life forms.

Those who, like Davies, think there might be more here on Earth than we know, subscribe to a theory that says life has evolved here more than once, creating a shadow biosphere-- a second set of life forms that live so differently from what we know that we might not have thought to look for them. Davies warns the BBC, though, that he's not talking about the kind of alien life found on Star Trek.

Davies, a theoretical physicist, managed to reference Star Trek, "smoking but not inhaling," graduate student labor, and a "Mission to Earth" all in one interview with a trusted news source, while also explaining the scientific background to his reasoning. Who knows-- if he can do that, maybe he can find aliens among us too.

The mysterious disease that has killed thousands of bats already in the northeast has now appeared in bats that hibernate in Pennsylvania mining caves.

The disease, called white-nose syndrome, is often accompanied by a certain fungus that can be found on bats in the dying colonies. In places where the disease has been confirmed, bats' hibernation patterns are altered, and they often move to warmer parts of a cave or even engage in a behavior scientists are calling "fly and die"-- where the bats try to leave their hibernation place altogether, but die shortly thereafter.

I don't find bats terribly cute and cuddly-- especially when they surprise me in my laundry basket, which happened a few weeks ago--but they do serve a lot of important functions for humans.

What's worse than waste from the coal burning process overflowing its container and spilling over a town?

How about oil waste spilling into a river? About 6,000 gallons of used oil sludge spilled into the Des Plaines River in Illinois on Sunday.

An electric pump that was supposed to move the waste from one holding tank to another didn't do its job. This happened at the Caterpillar plant in Rockdale, Illinois. The company says that it immediately notified authorities and is working to clean up the spill.

The EPA says this spill won't affect humans, though a three mile section of the river was shut down to traffic.

Considering the changes promised by the Obama administration in regards to environmental policy, this situation in his home state might be a good one to watch. So far, it seems that Caterpillar is doing its best to clean up the spill. But I wonder if one day we might consider storing waste more than 100 feet from rivers?

Ashley Judd is headlining a new commercial for the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund. The commercial attacks Sarah Palin's support of a state program that encourages the aerial killing of Alaskan wolves.

The policy is meant to balance out the predator/ prey populations in Alaska, particularly to sustain moose and caribou populations for hunting, according to Palin.

Palin claims that Defenders of Wildlife is using her, and her office, as a fundraising tool, unfairly. She also says that the predator control program is scientifically based and important. The Alaska Wildlife Alliance argues, to the contrary, that

Alaska's current predator control programs are clearly not based on sound biological science, nor is there any requirement that sound science must provide the basis for designing, implementing, and monitoring predator control. Furthermore, within Alaska, there is no general agreement among hunters, wildlife biologists, and policy makers as to what constitutes sound science. As a result, the current programs are based mainly on political science and are strongly endorsed by the governor who vows to continue them.

Judd says that Palin is "casting aside science and championing the slaughter of wildlife." Maybe if we take wolves off the endangered species list some places, and shoot them other places, Goldilocks and the caribou will finally be safe.

Seeing as hundreds of Starbucks stores are closing and most people don't have the money to spend on fancy coffees anyway, how can you improve your at-home or at-work coffee drinking experience?

For those who like hot coffee and work in small offices, brewing a whole pot every time you want some coffee isn't always the best answer. You wind up with scorched and/ or extra coffee, and that smell that means the coffee pot is always on in the office.

One answer became popular a few years ago: single-serving pod coffeemakers that prepare a single cup of coffee from a pre-measured mini-filter pack or plastic cup filled with coffee grounds. But many, have questioned the green-ness of such a coffeemaker.

I could never buy one of the single-cup coffeemakers, because the thought of all those pods would create too much consumer guilt for me to enjoy my caffeine fix. But thanks to the advice of a friend who was gifted the wrong kind of coffee pod machine, I now know one way to lessen the environmental waste produced by them.

There are now. . . reusable filters for single cup coffee makers.
Some of the single-cup Keurig coffee makers have a filter that you can simply place where the disposable cup would normally go. You fill the reusable filter with the appropriate amount of ground coffee (again, in larger grounds than a normal pot) and still get your hot, single cup of coffee-- but only have to dispose of the used grounds.

Yes, you may still use more grounds of coffee per cup, but you don't have to worry about the piles and piles of little plastic cups--one for each cup of coffee-- filling your trash can, and then a landfill somewhere.

Whether you know about Madagascar's lemurs from the eponymous movie, or because they're an often-cited and charismatic endangered species, there's now even more cause for concern for the species.

Conservationists report this week that a nickel mine in Madagascar will negatively impact the ecology of the area, including increasing risks for several local endangered species.

Though the company responsible for the mine is working to minimize its environmental impact, they are still clearing forests--including a 220 kilometer long, 25 meter wide path for the mine waste pipeline.

In the photogenic endangered animal category is the rare Greater Bamboo Lemur, reduced now to about 110 individuals living in the wild.

Tungsten is in many everyday weapons, from bullets to golf clubs to "armor penetrators." But wait! There's more! From Science Daily and Chemical Engineering News comes word that tungsten might be more dangerous than we thought.

The military thought it would be safe to use tungsten in the manufacturing of "green bullets" (safe except, of course,when the bullets killed people) but recent research has suggested that the chemical has nasty side effects on plants (stunted growth), earthworms (reproductive problems) and aquatic creatures (premature death).

We currently use tungsten for everything from light bulbs to wedding bands . It is also used to make very tough metal alloys, and to keep your clothes from catching fire. And it's in coal ash too, which, turns out, might not be so good for us.