Important Stuff

Ask the scientist

In recent debates concerning a new energy bill in Congress, southeastern legislators argued against provisions requiring a certain percentage of electricity come from renewable resources by a future date. What was their objection? If I recall, part of their objection was that there are fewer renewable resources in the southeastern U.S., compared to other regions. Maybe someone should have asked…
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Important Stuff

How long can you go without a drink?

It may not be a good time to move to the southwest. Lake Mead Could Be Within a Few Years of Going Dry, Study Finds – New York Times: Lake Mead, the vast reservoir for the Colorado River water that sustains the fast-growing cities of Phoenix and Las Vegas, could lose water faster than previously thought and run dry within 13 years, according to a new study by scientists at the Scripps…
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With appologies to my cold weather friends*

It’s too friggin hot! For crying out loud, it’s February. We should have had at least one good freeze, even on the coast. I think we had one night where they were worried they might have to ice down the strawberries in Plant City, but I don’t think it happened. Why am I griping now? I just looked up the weather for the week, and discovered that tonight is supposed to be our…
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Important Stuff

Beyond paper or plastic

Those wily Brits are up to something again… Bags of Change: Carrot Better Than Stick – TreeHugger: Bags of Change encourages responsible shopping bag use by dangling a tasty carrot. In short you get a discount at any participating store into which you to take their funky organic hemp-cotton or Amazonian latex bags. So far over 50 stores are involved. I kid because I care. Actually, I…
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Important Stuff

Hey, what's your volume?

This is not a good post. I’m mostly venting a little frustration from this evening (and not all of it from the subject of this entry). I couldn’t avoid references to an article in the CS Monitor today. I must have come across half a dozen of them. AS ARCTIC ICE MELTS, SOUTH POLE ICE GROWS Over the past 20 years, southern sea ice has expanded, in contrast to the Arctic’s decline…
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Important Stuff

Is it getting warmer in here?

As I mentioned yesterday, until recently I haven’t worried very much about global warming. It’s been in the back of my mind, like any good liberal, but I haven’t done much about it. Like many folks, I was shaken a bit by the Al Gore movie; but a certain blog gave me an extra push. I’ll admit that I hadn’t read much on the topic for more than ten years, back when…
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Important Stuff

My children's world

How often have I asked you to do something for me? I think I asked you once to think about drinking more water from the tap, but that’s the only thing that comes to mind. What I’d like you to do now is a little more important, but it requires a lot less effort. Consider signing an online petition. It’s about the ongoing climate negotiations in Bali, and the role the US has taken…
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Important Stuff

Bottling water

We stopped buying bottled water about a year ago. Here’s a few good reasons why: From Think Outside the Bottle: Worldwide, consumers spent $100 billion on bottled water in 2005. Making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil last year – enough fuel for more than 1 million U.S. cars for a year – and…
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Important Stuff

Thinking about electric cars

Not long ago I was having a group discussion with my family about electric cars. Cheryl and I had just seen the movie, “Who Killed the Electric Car,” which prompted the long follow-up discussion. We were all over the place… taking about the differences between emissions from autos versus power-plants (one of the nearby power-plants in Tampa has long been considered one of the…
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Important Stuff

Bettor, Better or worse?

There’s an editorial in the November 5th issue of The New Republic which addresses a few of the global warming doubters out there. The article mentions researchers who were surprised to find evidence that the world’s oceans are no longer absorbing as much carbon dioxide as they used to. (Just in case you missed the memo, that’s potentially a very bad thing.) The editorial…
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