Pages tagged ecology:

BBC - Earth News - Ant mega-colony takes over world
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8127000/8127519.stm
Games@NOAA
http://games.noaa.gov/

online games re ecology, recycling, oceans, etc.
Environment Games
games to help Oscar the otter protect his environment
current work
http://chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11
Photographs of albatross chicks which were made on Midway Atoll. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.
Top 10 Myths about Sustainability: Scientific American
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=top-10-myths-about-sustainability
hat meets the needs of the present without compro
When a word becomes so popular you begin hearing it everywhere, in all sorts of marginally related or even unrelated contexts, it means one of two things. Either the word has devolved into a meaningless cliché, or it has real conceptual heft. “Green” (or, even worse, “going green”) falls squarely into the first category. But “sustainable,” which at first conjures up a similarly vague sense of environmental virtue, actually belongs in the second. True, you hear it applied to everything from cars to agriculture to economics. But that’s because the concept of sustainability is at its heart so simple that it legitimately applies to all these areas and more. Despite its simplicity, however, sustainability is a concept people have a hard time wrapping their minds around. To help, Scientific American Earth 3.0 has consulted with several experts on the topic to find out what kinds of misconceptions they most often encounter. The result is this take on the top 10 myths about sustainability.
Despite its simplicity, however, sustainability is a concept people have a hard time wrapping their minds around. To help, Scientific American Earth 3.0 has consulted with several experts on the topic to find out what kinds of misconceptions they most often encounter. The result is this take on the top 10 myths about sustainability.
BBC NEWS | Technology | 'Carbon cost' of Google revealed
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7823387.stm
US physicist Alex Wissner-Gross claims that a typical Google search on a desktop computer produces about 7g CO2. However, these figures were disputed by Google, who say a typical search produced only 0.2g of carbon dioxide.
intereante BBC y Google
A typical Google search produces between 0.2g and 7g of carbon dioxide.
Dr Wissner-Gross's study claims that two Google searches on a desktop computer produces 14g of CO2, which is the roughly the equivalent of boiling an electric kettle.
Research by a Harvard University physicist has sparked debate about the environmental cost of Google searches.
Physicist Alex Wissner-Gross claims that a typical Google search on a desktop computer produces about 7g CO2.
think about it next time you search on google!
Two searches on a desktop computer produce 14g of CO2, equivalent to boiling an electric kettle.
Proyecto 10 al 100
http://www.project10tothe100.com/intl/ES/index.html
Ya se puede votar por las mejores ideas del Proyecto 10100 http://bit.ly/1a1N5A [from http://twitter.com/inti/statuses/4386841929]
Proyecto de Google para celebrar los 10 años. 10 millones de dolares en premios.
Google presenta un proyecto para las mejores 100 ideas para cambiar el mundo. La votación empieza el 17 de marzo del 2009
Op-Ed Columnist - The Inflection Is Near? - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/opinion/08friedman.html?em
Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”
Friedman, Thomas L.. The Inflection Is Near?." New York Times 07 March 2009.
We must have growth, but we must grow in a different way. For starters, economies need to transition to the concept of net-zero, whereby buildings, cars, factories and homes are designed not only to generate as much energy as they use but to be infinitely recyclable in as many parts as possible. Let’s grow by creating flows rather than plundering more stocks.
“We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children,” said Joe Romm, a physicist and climate expert who writes the indispensable blog climateprogress.org. We have been getting rich by depleting all our natural stocks — water, hydrocarbons, forests, rivers, fish and arable land — and not by generating renewable flows. “You can get this burst of wealth that we have created from this rapacious behavior,” added Romm. “But it has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, ‘This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate ...’ Real wealth is something you can pass on in a way that others can enjoy.”
m the things I’ve made for them,” Chen said. “And I also hear that, when they no longer want an item, they simply
The Inflection Is Near? By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Sometimes the satirical newspaper The Onion is so right on, I can’t resist quoting from it.
Freidman,
Disaster unfolds slowly in the Gulf of Mexico - The Big Picture - Boston.com
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/disaster_unfolds_slowly_in_the.html
Disaster se desdobra lentamente no Golfo do México -12 mai 2010
horrifying
In the three weeks since the April 20th explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and the start of the subsequent massive (and ongoing) oil leak, many attempts have been made to contain and control the scale of the environmental disaster. Oil dispersants are being sprayed, containment booms erected, protective barriers built, controlled burns undertaken, and devices are being lowered to the sea floor to try and cap the leaks, with little success to date. While tracking the volume of the continued flow of oil is difficult, an estimated 5,000 barrels of oil (possibly much more) continues to pour into the gulf every day. While visible damage to shorelines has been minimal to date as the oil has spread slowly, the scene remains, in the words of President Obama, a "potentially unprecedented environmental disaster." (40 photos total)
Rainforest Fungus Naturally Synthesizes Diesel | Wired Science from Wired.com
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/11/rainforest-fung.html
A fungus that lives inside trees in the Patagonian rain forest naturally makes a mix of hydrocarbons that bears a striking resemblance to diesel. It may be the case that organisms like this produced some — maybe not all — but some of the world's crude oil.
A fungus that lives inside trees in the Patagonian rain forest naturally makes a mix of hydrocarbons that bears a striking resemblance to diesel, biologists announced today. And the fungus can grow on cellulose, a major component of tree trunks, blades of grass and stalks that is the most abundant carbon-based plant material on Earth. "When we looked at the gas analysis, I was flabbergasted," said Gary Strobel, a plant scientist at Montana State University, and the lead author of a paper in Microbiology describing the find. "We were looking at the essence of diesel fuel."
Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it | World news | The Observer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell
With interesting comments.
"If this Gulf accident had happened in Nigeria, neither the government nor the company would have paid much attention," said the writer Ben Ikari, a member of the Ogoni people. "This kind of spill happens all the time in the delta."
The Deepwater Horizon disaster caused headlines around the world, yet the people who live in the Niger delta have had to live with environmental catastrophes for decades