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A Picture is Worth a Thousand Statistics
This image depicts eight million toothpicks. According to Seattle artist Chris Jordan, that's how many trees are harvested in the U.S. each month to make paper for mail-order catalogs.
The images are part of Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait, a series depicting the excesses and inequities of contemporary American culture. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something, such as the number of American children without health insurance, or the number of disposable batteries produced every 15 minutes. Many of the images are mosaics of common objects.
"My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a
different effect than the raw numbers alone," Jordan writes. "Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to
connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for
example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones
retired every day."
We can't vouch for all of Jordan's statistics, but his pictures certainly help put them in perspective. Although the images can be viewed on Jordan's website, they are best experienced in person, where their sheer size helps to convey the enormous quantities represented.—Dawn Stover
Earthrace, the environmentally-friendly speedboat that recently abandoned two attempts to break the round-the-world speed record, has just announced plans to go for it again. The boat, designed and developed by a former oil industry engineer turned environmentalist, runs completely on biodiesel and should have a net zero carbon footprint. A wave-piercing, trimaran hull design helps it slice through the water. And if the swells get too big? Supposedly the boat has the ability to duck through the waves instead of rolling over them.
As we noted previously, though, the first attempt ended in tragedy. And the second didn't go so well, either: the crew discovered a crack in the hull and had to end the trip early.
Now the team will set out once more, this time from Valencia, Spain in March.—Gregory Mone
Electric scooters may get a kick-start from an unusual source: The NYPD. Starting in January, four scooters will be added to the city's police motor fleet. Though their number hardly makes for a revolution, the Vectrix scooters (the first plug-in vehicles legal on any highway or road) are part of a larger mission to green the department. Already, it boasts a number of hybrid and flex-fuel cars.
We've covered Vectrix's stateside arrival in the past. An $11,000 price tag puts it out of the reach of most consumers, but if the NYPD test is successful, it may popularize the scooter enough to help bring down the cost. Meanwhile, the department insists long-term fuel savings will offset a higher price.—Abby Seiff
We're going to deviate briefly from the physics of strange stunts on YouTube, and look instead at the new movie I Am Legend. Yes, there's a virus-based cure turned scourge that infects the vast majority of humanity, and plenty to think about along those lines, but we're going to stick to what happens to New York City.
In the beginning of the movie, the main character, Robert Neville, played by Will Smith, hunts deer in an almost entirely empty Manhattan. (Well, it's devoid of humans, anyway.) The filmmakers clearly put some thought into what the crowded metropolis would look like if people disappeared and the infrastructure shut down—they brought in at least one scientist for advice. Large weeds spring up everywhere from cracks in the sidewalk. But they're not too large, since Neville's only been alone on the island for about three years. There's at least one herd of deer, too, which isn't all that odd. They could have swam over to the island, or crossed one of the remaining bridges. Still, this version of people-free New York isn't as dramatic as the one imagined in Alan Weisman's bestseller The World Without Us. In the book, which reveals what would happen to Earth if humans simply disappeared, Weisman details the long-term changes to the city. He reminds us, first of all, that it wasn't always a concrete jungle: "Once, Manhattan was 27 square miles of porous ground interlaced with living roots that siphoned 47.2 inches of average annual rainfall up trees and into meadow grasses, which drank their fill and exhaled the rest back into the atmosphere." We don't want to give away the ending to I Am Legend, but as for The World Without Us, it's pretty predictable: Nature wins.—Gregory Mone
Last week, the oil company Royal Dutch Shell announced plans to build an algae biodiesel plant in Hawaii. The project will progress in stages: first, the company will build a small research plant, with hopes to build a full-scale commercial plant within two years. Algae is an incredibly tantalizing yet frustrating potential fuel source, as PopSci's Elizabeth Svoboda found out earlier this year when writing the tale of an algae biodiesel startup in Colorado. The microbes can create enormous amounts of oil from very little in the way of nutrients and land, but extracting the oil and converting it to biodiesel remains extremely difficult.
Shell is partnering with Hawaii-based HR Biopetroleum on their project, and hopes to produce 8.5 million barrels of biodiesel a year at the commercial plant.—Michael Moyer
Innovation of the Year Winner Nanosolar Ships Its First Low-Cost Solar Panels
After years of development, Nanosolar has announced today that they have shipped their first batch of inexpensive solar panels to the site of their first real-world deployment, a megawatt solar plant being built on the surface of a landfill in eastern Germany.
Nanosolar's innovative process for "printing" thin, inexpensive solar panels has attracted several high-profile investors, including Google's co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. By simplifying the manufacturing process and eliminating pricey silicon, many see the new process as the breakthrough needed to drive cheap solar power into the mainstream (many including we here at PopSci—the Powersheet received our "Innovation of the Year" award in this year's Best of What's New).
The first production panels to roll off the assembly line are getting special attention—one's being exhibited at Nanosolar HQ, another is heading for the Tech Museum in San Jose, and a third has been put up for auction on eBay. The current going rate for a piece of green tech history is $1,095—get your bids in now!
Federal scientists released some of the annual average temperature data for 2007, revealing that this year registers as the eighth warmest since 1895, when records were first kept. The average temperature was 54.3 degrees Fahrenheit in the U.S. Worldwide, that number is slightly higher, and the preliminary details of the annual report suggest that 2007 was the fifth warmest year on a global scale. Seven of the eight warmest years have occurred since 2001. Armed with ever more convincing data, not to mention projections that suggest how grave events could become in the future should our current practices continue, scientists are also suggesting that we not only make a greater effort to cut carbon emissions, but work harder to remove existing carbon from the air.—Gregory Mone
Congressman Makes Virtual Appearance at Climate Summit
Since Representative Edward Markey couldn't be in Bali for the United Nations climate change meeting, he appeared virtually instead. With the help of a staffer, Markey created an avatar in Second Life, and addressed the meeting via video screen, from his place in the virtual world. Sadly, he didn't get too adventurous with his dress. Even his avatar looks like a Capitol Hill insider.
Markey said he couldn't be there because he needed to be in the US to help pass a clean energy bill, but he should've taken a greener-than-thou route instead. Why did any of them waste the jet fuel going to Bali? They all should have stayed home, saved the fuel, and met in Second Life instead.—Gregory Mone
Salmon farms along the Canadian coast are driving wild salmon toward extinction, according to a study published today in the journal Science. The study looked at the survival rates of wild pink salmon in British Columbia's Broughton Archipelago, where salmon farms have sprung up along the shoreline in recent years.
Earlier studies have found that the netted pens of salmon farms are breeding grounds for parasitic sea lice, and that these lice can infect and kill young wild salmon passing by the farms. However, today's study by fisheries ecologists at the University of Alberta and Dalhousie University is the first to show that sea lice are having population-wide impacts. If nothing is done, the scientists predict that 99 percent of the pink salmon will be gone within four years.
Sea lice attach themselves to the skin of fish and feed on their flesh. Adult fish can survive this onslaught but younger fish (such as the one pictured here) are more vulnerable because they are smaller and have thinner skin. Normally salmon encounter lice only in the open ocean where the adult fish live, but salmon farms have concentrated the lice near the rivers where wild salmon are born.
There are two possible solutions to the problem: Raise farmed salmon in self-contained pens, or move the existing pens away from the rivers and migratory routes used by young wild salmon. The fish farmers claim both options are too expensive. But losing an entire population of wild salmon would be even more costly.—Dawn Stover
Image: Alexandra Morton, Salmon Coast Field Station
Google Earth today unveiled a new layer, called Earth from Above, featuring stunning images taken by the French nature photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand.
At left is one of those images, the Blue Lagoon geothermal spa in Iceland. Each image is accompanied by an interesting statistic: In this case, we learn that 90 percent of the homes in Iceland are heated by electricity produced from geothermal sources.
The photos are accessible from the Global Awareness folder in Google Earth.—Dawn Stover
Oceanlinx, an Australian company that makes devices capable of converting the juice from ocean swells into electricity, has signed a deal with the state of Rhode Island to produce two separate offshore facilities that could end up powering more than 15,000 homes. One of the facilities will boast a bunch of the devices, each of which will be about 60 feet wide and 30 feet tall. Read more about how they work here. They're big, but they'd sit far enough offshore so they wouldn't be an eyesore.
We wrote about the technology at the beginning of last year—at that point the company was called Energetech—and back then everyone was a bit more optimistic in terms of the timetable. Now it will be at least two years before the devices start generating electricity. But at least things are moving along again.—Gregory Mone
Several companies are planning to build new nuclear reactors in the United States, and they'd like to speed up the approval process to get these plants online as soon as possible, but that might not be happening. All plant designs have to be approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, so if a company wants to construct a new model, or import a proven one from France or Japan, it still has to get the NRC's OK, and this can take a while.
According to the New York Times, three companies have filed applications to build and operate five new reactors - but they've all either substantially modified approved designs or suggested models that haven't gotten NRC approval yet. Which means they're probably not going to be breaking ground as soon as they'd like. For many environmentalists, this is good news, considering the fact that we still haven't figured out what we're going to do with the waste yet. But others insist that we need nuclear, and we need to start planning new plants now, to meet our growing energy needs and assure that fossil fuels don't consume an increasing slice of that budget in the coming decades as today's nuclear power plants are retired. For more on that idea, settle down with this enormous study.-Gregory Mone
In recent months, PopSci has covered various scientists' plans to curb global warming through carbon sequestration, mainly by feeding it to algae to make biofuel, or burying it underground.
Today, a company called Skyonic announced a novel new system, Skymine, which uses the carbon dioxide emitted from smokestacks to make baking soda. According to Skyonic CEO Joe David Jones, the system will be powered by waste heat from factories, and will produce food-grade baking soda.
Last year, the utility company Luminant installed a pilot version of
the system at its Big Brown Steam Electric Station in Fairfield, Texas. There's still quite a bit of work to be done to make the current system viable on a large scale, but the baking soda idea offers solutions to some of the economic problems posed by other carbon sequestration methods. For starters, according to Jones, the stuff can be sold for home or industrial use or buried harmlessly in landfields or abandoned mines.
Jones apparently got the idea for the SkyMine system while watching a Discovery Channel show with his kids. He pulled out an old college science textbook and immediately turned to a passage about converting C02 to baking soda. He'd found it interesting years ago and highlighted it for future reference. -Megan Miller
The zeroHouse, a concept home designed by the New York architecture firm Specht Harpman, would run on solar power and rain water, use gravity-fed plumbing instead of traditional energy-demanding pumps, and recycle its waste.
SF site Technovelgy.com likens it to the advanced abodes described in the Arthur C. Clarke novel Childhood's End, which could be anywhere on land, or even in the sea. The zeroHouse isn't quite there yet, but it certainly would make its occupants feel like the characters in an SF novel. Even the winged solar panel design is reminiscient of the International Space Station. Unfortunately, though, the couches don't look very comfortable.—Gregory Mone
This study should've been released a few weeks ago, when it might have reduced the rampant head-scratching that resulted following the announcement that Al Gore would receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Just a little bit, anyway.
According to Georgia Tech university researchers, as temperatures decreased several centuries ago during a period called the Little Ice Age, the number of wars increased, famine spiked, and population declined. The idea is that changes in climate—whether they involve boost or a decline in temperature—affect water supplies and seasons, disrupting food supplies. Food shortages can produce conflicts, and the resulting wars, combined with starvation, result in population decline.
Georgia Tech researcher Peter Brecke says today's warming temperatures could eventually lead to starvation and food-related clashes in the future.—Gregory Mone
The 951 (and counting) birds collected alive after the San Francisco Bay oil spill are doing their part for science. Some of the birds are now subjects in studies led by veterinarians at the UC Davis Oiled Wildlife Care Network, who hope to improve treatments for oiled birds everywhere.
One study is using infrared thermography to spot birds that are losing heat too quickly [image at left]. In another study, birds will be equipped with radio transmitters so that researchers can study where they go and how long they live after they are released from the care center.
Of those 951 birds found alive, 197 later died or were euthanized, and 394 were washed. The remaining 360 are being monitored and fed in a warm room until they are strong enough for a bath.—Dawn Stover
Scientists from Tulane University and the University of New Hampshire have concluded that the severe damage Hurricane Katrina inflicted on five million acres of forest has led to a large release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
As many as 320 million large trees were killed or severely banged up in Gulf Coast forests. When healthy, these trees act as carbon sinks, pulling the stuff out of the air. Without them around, that carbon dioxide is free to travel up into the atmosphere. On top of that, the decomposition process releases still more carbon dioxide.
Lead author Jeffrey Chambers, a biologist at Tulane, had this to say: "The loss of so many trees will cause these forests to be a net source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere for years to come." The work is in the latest issue of Science.—Gregory Mone
L.A. Auto Show: Chevy Tahoe Hybrid Wins Green Car of the Year
A full-size SUV with a 6.0-liter engine is Green Car of the Year? Strange but true: The 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid beat the Chevy Malibu Hybrid, Mazda Tribute Hybrid, Nissan Altima Hybrid, and Saturn Aura Hybrid for the honor. It makes sense, though: that enormous engine is a two-mode hybrid—a second-generation hybrid powertrain that both boosts mileage at highway speeds and allows for the serious towing power a vehicle like the Tahoe needs. (Incidentally, PopSci gave the two-mode hybrid a Best of What’s New award in our December issue).
The Tahoe is the first hybrid full-size SUV, and it avoids the temptation to use that electric motor just to add horsepower while keeping fuel efficiency constant. In fact, the Tahoe gets impressive gas mileage: 21 mpg in the city, which makes it as efficient as a Toyota Camry with a 4-cylinder engine. So as odd as it may seem that a giant SUV would be anointed Green Car of the Year, the Tahoe is certainly more of a game changer than the other four finalists. That said: Here’s hoping that a truly revolutionary car—a full-fledged production plug-in hybrid or fuel-cell vehicle—comes along soon to claim this prize.—Seth Fletcher
The movement against trans-fats in our foods could end up helping our climate, not just our hearts and health. Bill Bolch, president of New England Biodiesel, a company that distributes home-based filling stations for the green fuel, says the ban on trans-fats will benefit his industry, since those oils actually make sub-par fuel.
Biodiesel, which reduces emissions by 80% compared with standard cars, is mainly made up of vegetable oil or animal fat, so you can get the key ingredients at a local restaurant. Blend this stuff with the right mix of lye and methanol and you've got a more natural way of running your car or even heating your home.
But Bolch, the 2007 winner of the Green Grand Prix Road Rally, warns that not every dining outlet should be your new fuel station. For example, you don't want to have McDonald's on your list. Apparently the oil that the fast-food giant uses makes for sub-par fuel. For a primer on the benefits of this versatile fuel, check here.—Gregory Mone
As anyone with greasy hair can attest, human hair has a natural affinity for oil. That's why hundreds of volunteers are sponging oil from San Francisco beaches using doormat-size pads of woven human hair. The pads, provided by the nonprofit group Matter of Trust, are made from hair collected in Bay Area salons.
The oil-soaked pads will be stacked with layers of straw and oyster mushrooms between them. The mushrooms are expected to absorb the oil and turn the pads into nontoxic compost that can be used for landscaping along roads.—Dawn Stover
Ed note: This story turned out to be a hoax, but it's still pretty darn entertaining. Today the AP posted a correction stating that Paris Hilton never made any comments about helping drunken elephants. Makes you wonder how the story hit the wires in the first place. Just goes to show you can't believe everything you read.
Paris Hilton was applauded by conservationists today for lending her celebrity to a truly important cause: binge-drinking elephants. Hilton’s involvement comes on the heels of an incident in north-eastern India last month when 40 elephants broke into a farm, slurped up an extremely-strong batch of home-brewed rice beer and went “berserk,” knocking over electrical pylons and electrocuting six of the pachyderms in the process. "The elephants get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them," the heiress was quoted saying. (The same could be said for Paris’ former BFF Britney Spears.)
Whether she intended to or not, Hilton’s point highlights a greater conservation concern for elephants, said Soumyadeep Dutta, who heads Nature's Beckon, a regional conservation group. Elephants, drunk or not, are becoming a greater risk to humans (and vice versa) in rural areas such as north-eastern India, where people are rapidly transforming elephants’ forest habitat into farmland. This has cut into the beasts’ food supply and, in the last few years, increased the chance of villagers running into a herd of hungry animals.—Bjorn Carey
Remember that scary prediction from the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change a few months back about sea levels rising by as much as 23 inches in the next 100 years and flooding coastal regions and displacing billions of people? Well, that forecast just got a little bit scarier.
A
new study from Ohio State University shows how rising sea levels could not only leave us homeless, but desperately parched as well. In the study, hydrologists simulated how saltwater forced inland can penetrate and pollute underground aquifers up to 50 percent more than previously estimated. In the United States, lands along the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, especially Florida and Louisiana, are most most vulnerable to flooding due to rising sea levels.
Now would be a good time to (a) not buy oceanfront property and (b) go check out the American Museum of Natural History’s excellent new exhibit “Water: H20 = Life,” (opened this week) and learn what you can do to help the world skirt the looming water crisis.—Nicole Dyer
A heap of trash that's twice the size of Texas is floating somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, as it's called, is 80 percent plastic, and weighs in at 3.5 million tons. Trapped in a circular course by winds and currents, it's been around since the 1950s, and has been growing tenfold every decade. It's not a dumping ground in the sense that people are flying or boating by and throwing their refuse into the heap. Instead, it's picking up trash that originates onshore, and has since made its way out into the Pacific. Cleaning it up doesn't sound too likely, since the effort would cost billions, but it would be nice if we figured out a way to stop adding to it. Another possibility: turning it into a sort of anti-Disney World. Surely that would convert even the worst plastic-wasting offenders among us into ardent environmentalists.—Gregory Mone
Last week, Julie Gerberding, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, addressed the Senate on the health impact of global warming. But the news emerged recently that her planned speech had been drastically cut down by White House editors.
The Senate did not, for example, hear her say that people in the Midwest and Northeast are expected to experience more heat-related illnesses as heat waves increase, or that the public health effects of climate change basically haven't been addressed. Presidential science adviser John Marburger responded to the resulting criticism, noting points on which he and his staff believed that Gerberding's conclusions drifted from the scientific consensus.
But another prominent scientist, University of Wisconsin Professor Jonathan Patz, insists that her original testimony was scientifically accurate, and, more importantly, that we need to start dealing with the fact that climate change poses serious health risks. Read his unsettling conclusions here.—Gregory Mone
News reports last night reported that the Santa Ana winds pushing Southern California's wildfires had begun to slow down. These images, captured by NASA's Aqua satellite, offer some visual proof.
The image on the left was taken yesterday afternoon, and the one on the right was captured on October 22nd. Yes, there are still enormous clouds of smokes stretching west over the Pacific in yesterday's shot, but they're very different from the ones on the right, in which the winds create a narrow trail of smoke. You can really see how the strong winds are pushing on the fires.
On the other hand, in yesterday's image, on the left, the smoke sort of pools over the burns before flowing westward.—Gregory Mone
A number of factors are causing the fires in Southern California to rage: the region has received nine inches less rain than normal, and climate change has led to warmer days and longer fire seasons. But experts also say that the US Forest Service's policy of stopping wildfires quickly contributed to the problem, too. This allowed the underbrush to survive, providing fuel for future fires. Basically, putting out one fire too quickly gave the next one a better chance to thrive. The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting piece on the various contributors to the problem.—Gregory Mone
Sunday night, just before the fires in Southern California really started raging, 60 Minutes reported on the new age of "mega-fires"—infernos ten times larger than what we've seen before. The last fire season was the worst in recorded history—seven of the ten worst have occurred since 1999—and given the current devastation, this one can't be too far behind.
60 Minutes talked to University of Arizona fire ecologist Thomas Swetnam, who recently published a paper in Science linking global warming to an increase in the number of fires. The fire seasons are longer, he says, and the blazes themselves are reaching higher into the mountains.
In a joint testimony delivered to Congress just a month ago with Anthony Westerling of the University of California, Merced, Swetnam also warns that forecast models predict increased burning in the event of increased greenhouse gas concentrations. You can watch segments from the 60 Minutes program here, and for more frightening details of Swetnam's testimony, go here.—Gregory Mone
Chevy’s Equinox, the first hydrogen fuel cell-powered SUV, was the guest of honor at the press conference on Friday marking the opening of ECOFEST in New York City. This was the vehicle’s first public unveiling, although the official launch of the Equinox will be in late October. As part of a market test called Project Driveway, Chevy will be loaning 110 of these cars to people in areas that already have hydrogen-fueling infrastructure, like New York, California and Washington DC.
Contestants had to submit essays stating why they should win a lease on one of the rare concept vehicles, which cost an estimated $1 million to build. The main advantages of the Equinox are that it’s free of harmful emissions (the only byproduct is pure water) and not reliant on fossil fuels. Currently, the disadvantages are that the vehicles are made individually at great cost (a fact that will change when and if they go into mass production) and hydrogen fuel stations are few and far between. New York City residents, for instance, will have to drive about 30 miles, all the way to White Plains, to load up their tanks with enough juice to travel the next 200 miles.
The current model is a market test vehicle and is unavailable for retail sales; but Chevy claims that the cost of the Equinox will be “competitive” (One wonders with what: The Maserati? The Prius?) when mass-produced. —Saba Berhie
Forbes just released a list of the least fuel-efficient hybrids, and though the fact that some of these supposedly green rides aren't exactly saving the planet shouldn't shock too many people, it's still nice to see the guilty called out. Just because your Lexus LS 600h has some batteries in it shouldn't make you feel all nice and environmental. The thing still burns up a gallon of gas every 21 miles. Even worse: A GMC Sierra model that gets only 16 mpg. Enough said. Here's the list.—Gregory Mone
A large meteorite supposedly fell from the sky over the weekend, excavating a 65-foot-wide crater in a remote area of the Andes. But whether the space rock really gave off fumes that caused hundreds of people to become ill is another issue. Some scientists are wondering whether it was a meteorite at all, or if, on the other hand, some kind of hydrothermal event produced the fumes.
Others speculated that the water collected in the crater may have boiled for up to ten minutes, and this could have emitted some vapors. One official reportedly experienced nose and throat irritation upon approaching the crater even though he was wearing a mask. According to the AP, though, doctors that visited the area uncovered no evidence of a stomach bug. Clearly, none of these Peruvians have seen Smallville. They should really be testing the locals for superpowers. Duh.—Gregory Mone
Filmmaker Werner Herzog, director of Grizzly Man and the recent Rescue Dawn, chronicles his time at Antarctica's famous McMurdo Station for his latest movie, Encounters at the End of the World. The movie is both about the place and the animals that inhabit it—the natural life and the scientists that study it. Reviews of the film, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival this weekend, suggest that Herzog didn't throw all of his considerable skill at the project, but that the finished product and, in particular, the director's take on just what we're doing there at McMurdo in the first place, is impressive.—Gregory Mone
A Florida developer is building a massive, $29 million waterfront home that should end up being the first of its size to get a thumbs-up from the U.S. Green Building Council.
He didn't skimp on amenities: The house will have eight bedrooms, 11 baths, two eleveators, two wine cellars and more. But it will also boast an extensive solar panel system, reflecting ponds and water gardens designed to cool the property and a water runoff collection system, and energy-efficient lighting.—Gregory Mone
Enjoy the amazing Planet Earth footage of polar bears, since the incredible animals might be even harder to find in the coming decades. The U.S. Geological Survey announced on Friday that by the year 2050, thinning sea ice in the Arctic will cut the polar population by two-thirds.
The problem is that the bears will lose 42 percent of the territory they roam in the summer, which is when they hunt and breed. Only 16,000 bears remain today, and there won't be any left in Alaska by the century's midpoint.—Gregory Mone
Die Moto, a motorcycle that runs on biodiesel, set national and international records on Monday, cruising to a top speed of 130.6 miles per hour.
Built by The Crucible, a group of industrial artists in Oakland, the bike has a modified BMW car engine and a handcrafted aluminum shell. And it's a green machine, too. Running on B100, or pure bioediesel fuel, the bike emits 78 percent less CO2 than a standard diesel engine. The team eventually hopes to crank it up to 160 miles per hour.—Gregory Mone
The annual back-to-school sale has acquired a greenish tinge. The Boston Globe has an interesting piece detailing how stores across the country are offering more environmentally-conscious products to their student consumers, including solar-powered backpacks (pictured here) that can re-charge an iPod, plus loads of school supplies made from recycled materials.
Most of these products come at a premium, but Wal-Mart, of course, is still managing to keep even its green goods cheap. The retail giant is selling an inexpensive computer that it says consumes far less electricity than the average box. Colleges themselves have also started trying to mend their ways, as a number of schools across the country are beginning to shrink their environmental footprints.—Gregory Mone
In what Russian officials are calling a race against the U.S. to stake a claim in an area believed to be rich in natural resources, two Russian ships are set to deploy a pair of submeriibles to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean tonight. The race aspect might be overblown, though; according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which is conducting the U.S. mission in the area, its scientists intend to study hydrothermal vents and the biology of the deep ocean.
The Russians, on the other hand, clearly seem to be heading down for the riches. It's not clear yet whether the potential reserves are large enough to justify the cost of pumping them out. But the Russian explorers, who will pilot the two subs down to depths of 14,000 feet, hope to establish that the area is actually a natural extension of their country, and thus belongs to Russia. They're even planning to plant a flag.—Gregory Mone
Until recently, electronics manufacturers have been more concerned with producing faster, smaller, sleeker products than with what would happen when we the consumers started throwing our old gadgets away in favor of the latest model. Many PCs and devices are often laden with dangerous chemicals, and they’re total energy hogs, too. But now, according to an article in the USA Today, this situation is starting to change, as manufacturers begin to take the impact of their products on the environment much more seriously. In June, Dell announced a green initiative, and weeks before that, Apply announced its intention to clean up its products, too. This is good news, because according to Greenpeace—which recently released a scorecard ranking companies in terms of their environmental impact—Jobs and his crew rank near the bottom. Nokia holds the top spot.—Gregory Mone
The Financial Times is reporting that the Chinese government edited down a World Bank study detailing the effects of pollution on the health of its people. The reasoning was that it could promote social unrest. Basically, they thought it might make some folks a little angry to learn why 750,000 people are dying prematurely each year. Gee, you think so?
According to the research group, as many as 400,000 people die annually from air pollution in cities, and 300,000 pass away from breathing bad air indoors. A draft version of the report is available here.—Gregory Mone
This is a wave you won’t want to surf. Scientists at University College London, working in collaboration with engineers from HR Wallingford, announced plans to start building a tsunami-generator to better study the strange waves. Tsunami are difficult to study because they have enormously long wavelengths – if you were out on the open ocean, you could roll right over one of these monsters in your boat without even noticing. However, when they approach the shore, and shallow water, this wavelength shrinks, and they stand up higher and higher, eventually producing the walls of rushing water that can wipe out shorelines. To simulate these conditions, and study what happens as the tsunami’s wavelength contracts, the scientists and engineers plan to build a nearly 150-foot-long flume. They hope to have it operational by the summer of 2008.—Gregory Mone
In 1709, someone spotted an image of the Virgin Mary in a tree root in northern Colombia. That turned out to be a lifesaver for two rare bird species, the Recurve-billed Bushbird and the Perija Parakeet, which were recently photographed for the first time in the wild.
Thanks to the Virgin sighting, declared a miracle by the Vatican, the remote bamboo forest around the tree root has been preserved as a sanctuary for almost three centuries. In 2005 it was also designated as an Important Bird Area, which attracted ornithologists and birdwatchers.
The new visitors re-discovered the Recurve-billed Bushbird, which had not been seen for 40 years. It’s known as the “smiling” bird because of the curve of its lower bill. Earlier this month, researchers from the Colombia bird-conservation organization Fundación ProAves finally caught the bird on film.
Photographed in the same habitat, the Perija Parakeet (also known as Todd’s Parakeet) is even rarer. Scientists estimate that only 30 to 50 of these birds survive in the wild. It may take another miracle to save them from extinction.—Dawn Stover
I haven’t posted a Smackdown in weeks because, well, I was silenced by self-loathing after two months of intensive, carbon-emitting air travel. The good news is, the travel spree seems to have tapered off, which means I can go easy on the self-flagellating and carbon-offset buying and focus on actions that do some concrete good.
A couple weeks ago, traces of perchlorinate, or “perc”—a highly toxic dry-cleaning chemical— were found in the water supply in Queens, near my apartment. Thoroughly creeped out by this, I did a little research and found a “green” clothes-cleaning shop that I now use instead of my old dry cleaner and laundromat. It eschews perc in favor of natural products made by Ecover for both delicates and everyday laundry, and they even wash in cold water to save energy.
Now, I know what you might be thinking: Soap is the least of our environmental worries, right? Well, not really. Anything you use to clean eventually ends up in the water supply, and most products contain phosphates that are toxic to aquatic life—particularly the plants and tiny phytoplankton that marine animals eat. Growing up in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, I was made acutely aware of that fact through public-service announcements and in-school environmental programs. Even the storm drains were marked “Chesapeake Bay drainage,” to remind you that anything you poured down there was going to wash into the feeding grounds for your striped bass and oyster-on-the-half-shell dinner.
In New York, people don’t really seem to have embraced the “Save the Bay” ethos. The Hudson is full of PCBs from decades of industrial dumping, Newtown Creek is the site of one of the country’s most toxic sewage-treatment centers, the East River is full of… well, Jimmy Hoffa’s body… you get my drift. These things take time for large communities of people to learn, but sometimes the best we can do is try to be models of good behavior.
So I was pretty psyched about finding a better way to do my laundry, but I was also inspired to make sure I hadn’t slipped into any bad habits with the other household chemicals in my apartment. I don’t have a yard, so there are no fertilizers or pesticides to contend with (although if there were, I’d be using compost and Dr. Bronner’s biodegradable soap to, respectively, enhance the soil and chase away creepy crawlies). The main sources of chemical pollution in my apartment (apart from the paint VOCs that were unfortunately emitting before I got there) are the products that clean my surfaces, clothes and self.
I know all kinds of hippy ways to clean using vinegar and vegetable oil and so forth, which you can learn more about here, but the best-smelling, most convenient products I’ve found are from Mrs. Meyer’s. Those products—including floor cleaners, toilet-bowl cleaners and surface sprays—are made from natural, biodegradable compounds, come in recyclable containers, and smell delicious. All you have to do is spray some on a reusable rag or natural sponge, and you’re in business. What other green cleaning tricks do folks out there know? Tell me in the comments section. —Megan Miller
I just spent a nice night outdoors drinking some frozen margaritas at my favorite solar-powered NYC watering hole, Habana Outpost. Which made a headline that I ran across today doubly disturbing:
I was fully prepared to make some personal sacrifices for our embattled planet's health (as you know, we're not all that pumped about the Bush administration's hype of ethanol), but this hit a little too close for comfort. I guess it's good that I'm a bourbon drinker first and foremost. —John Mahoney
Listen carefully, blog readers, and you will hear the swishing sound of sharp, protracted claws slicing through the air. Let the eco-friendly catfight begin! MegaCarbon Emitter takes issue with my "diversion tactic" and in the next breath books a cross-country flight to San Francisco? Sorry, sister, but your flirtation with vegetarianism and canvas shopping bags will do nothing to compensate for all the damage your frequent business flying inflicts on the environment. You might as well drive a Hummer to the farmers market. Truth is, as long as you continue to fly as often as you do, your carbon footprint will grow like an unchecked tumor, with every flight making it bigger and nastier until eventually your mere presence will spark droughts and floods.
Meanwhile my carbon footprint continues to shrink. I've made good on my promise to eat locally, which means I'm now packing my own lunch (in Tupperware bins, of course) and, frankly, hating it. (Sandwiches, sandwiches, sandwiches.) The upside is that I'm sort of losing weight, maybe. And that's gotta be good for the environment. Plus, I plan to start bicycling to work once or twice a week in May, which is Bike Month in New York And while I'm making the 22-mile round trip I'll keep an eye out for Talking Heads front man David Byrne's stolen bike, which may or may not still bear a MOST space telescope sticker, more evidence of his supreme dreaminess. But I digress. Back to the green cat fight . . . —Nicole Dyer
Boy, Nicole’s last post sure was a lulu, huh? Way to divert attention from the ol’ energy-sucking light bulbs by randomly pointing to some awesome new vertical farm. “Hey, look over there, guys. A giant skyscraper full of vegetables….” Come on, girl. Put your dukes up!
Anyhoo, enough about her, let’s talk about me. My meat-reduction plan has been going swimmingly. Over the past three weeks, I’ve consumed no animal flesh save yesterday’s helping of Easter brisket (legal under my meat-is-a-celebration clause), which was of the succulent, slow-braised with vinegar and onions variety, from a free-range, grass-fed, locally raised steer—i.e., totally worth it. Other than that, it’s been a very Asian diet of veggies, rice, and tofu for me, pretty much. But here’s a tip for anyone thinking of becoming a vegetarian: If someone offers you a banh mi made with “vegan chicken,” run away. Blech.
While I work on mastering such pratfalls of my new nutrition plan,
I’m also moving on to the next step of my carbon diet: reducing the
amount of trash I create in the world. Living in NYC, this is a pretty
tricky thing to do. Every time you buy anything in New York, a
well-meaning cashier tries to give it to you in a plastic bag. Since
most people don’t have cars, it’s a pain in the butt to shop here, so
everything under the sun (including beer, cigarettes, groceries,
prescriptions, and random purchases from The Container Store) can be
delivered—usually in several layers of cardboard boxes. Lunch is
generally a carryout affair, complete with individual Styrofoam trays,
plastic containers, and wooden chopsticks. All in all, this amounts to
a massive amount of unnecessary waste. And only a small portion of it
gets reused, because NYC recycling is restricted to paper, aluminum,
and numbers 1 and 2 plastic. (Also because PopSci’s cleaning team throws the contents of our recycling bins in the trash dumpster. Yeah. We’re working on this.)
I’m finding that the only real way to combat this tidal wave of
waste is to do it on a very personal level: I try to remember to carry
reusable tote bags with me to the grocery store, and when I’m there, I
do my best to choose products with minimal packaging. Whenever I can, I
refuse bodega bags (“No thanks! I can just put this, um, pint of ice
cream in my purse…”) and when I get up early enough to prepare
something, I bring my lunch to work in Tupperware (this one is tough
for me because our office is located smack in the middle of the
Korean/Indian/Japanese food corridor, and the takeout is
oh-so-gratifying). And I skip the plastic bag for my wet workout
clothes, and just put ‘em in a different compartment of my gym duffle.
I’m not giving up toilet paper like No-Impact Man or anything—although there’s a certain appeal to the
This image depicts eight million toothpicks. According to Seattle artist Chris Jordan, that's how many trees are harvested in the U.S. each month to make paper for mail-order catalogs.
