Extreme Weather – The New Norm May 4, 2013
Posted by tkcollier in Enviroment, In The News, Video.Tags: amount of rainfall, climate, climate models, Environment, Global Warming, nasa study, Nature, Science, weather
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The climate will swing to extremes as it tries to find a new equilibrium, in response to the warming climate. Siberian winters will be colder, heat waves extended, etc. This report says that if you are in a rainy location, expect more deluges, and if you live in a dry area, expect more droughts. Specifically, the new study found that although the 14 climate models differ when it comes to the amount of rainfall in individual locations such as cities, over larger areas, they all point to the same average picture. That is, for every single degree Fahrenheit the global average temperature climbs, heavy rainfall will increase in wet areas by 3.9 percent, while dry areas will experience a 2.6 percent increase in time periods without any rainfall.
Rain will get more extreme thanks to global warming, says NASA study | The Verge.
World’s Tallest Palm Trees April 9, 2013
Posted by tkcollier in Cool photos, Enviroment.Tags: Columbia, Environment, Nature, Palm Trees
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Colombia’s lush Cocora Valley, part of Los Nevados National Park, is the principal home for the country’s national tree, the palma de cera, or wax palm. The lanky tree is the world’s tallest palm tree, reaching up to 200 feet tall. Photograph by Alex Treadway
via Cocora Valley, Colombia — Travel 365 — National Geographic.
Video -Humongous Greenland Glacier Collapse February 2, 2013
Posted by tkcollier in Enviroment, Video.Tags: Environment, Glacier, Global Warming, Science, Video
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On May 28, 2008, Adam LeWinter and Director Jeff Orlowski filmed a historic breakup at the Ilulissat Glacier in Western Greenland. The calving event lasted for 75 minutes and the glacier retreated a full mile across a calving face three miles wide. The height of the ice is about 3,000 feet, 300-400 feet above water and the rest below water.
Chasing Ice won the award for Excellence in Cinematography at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, and has won 24 awards so far this year. Playing in theaters now. Thanks to Valerie Sanders. Click on the YouTube logo, choose the HD option and go Full Screen for the full effect.
Cute Kitty the Killer January 30, 2013
Posted by tkcollier in Enviroment, Lifestyle.Tags: cats, Environment, Nature, Wildlife, wildlife slaughter
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A new study by the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that domestic cats in the United States kill a median of 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals a year, most of them native mammals like shrews, chipmunks and voles rather than introduced pests like the Norway rat.
The estimated kill rates are two to four times higher than mortality figures previously bandied about, and position the domestic cat as one of the single greatest human-linked threats to wildlife in the nation. More birds and mammals die at the mouths of cats, the report said, than from automobile strikes, pesticides and poisons, collisions with skyscrapers and windmills and other so-called anthropogenic causes.
Yet the new study estimates that free-roaming pets account for only about 29 percent of the birds and 11 percent of the mammals killed by domestic cats each year, and the real problem arises over how to manage the 80 million or so stray or feral cats that commit the bulk of the wildlife slaughter.
via That Cuddly Kitty Is Deadlier Than You Think – NYTimes.com.
Is Great White Following Kayak Picture Real? January 20, 2013
Posted by tkcollier in Cool photos, Enviroment.Tags: Cool photos, Environment, Great White, Nature
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I’ve always wondered if the well-circulated image was rea. The Photographer’s notes sound quite convincing.
©Thomas P. Peschak
When this photograph was first published in Africa Geographic, BBC Wildlife and later in Paris Match and the Daily Mail (London) it resulted in a flurry of e-mails, phone calls and letters from around the world asking if the image was a fake. The image became the most talked about of shark photograph ever.
The photograph is real, no photoshop, no digital manipulation, no nothing, in fact it was shot on slide film Fuji Provia 100 using a Nikon F5 Camera and 17-35 mm lens. For those conspiracy fans who still doubt its authenticity please read how I took the photograph.
To capture this image I tied myself to the tower of the research boat Lamnidae and leaned into the void, precariously hanging over the ocean while waiting patiently for a white shark to come along. I wanted to shot a photograph that would tell the story of our research efforts to track white sharks using kayaks. When the first shark of the day came across our sea kayak it dove to the seabed and inspected it from below. I quickly trained my camera on the dark shadow which slowly transformed from diffuse shape into the sleek outline of a large great white. When the shark’s dorsal fin broke the surface I thought I had the shot, but hesitated a fraction of a second and was rewarded with marine biologist Trey Snow in the kayak turning around to look behind him. I pressed the shutter and the rest was history. Throughout the day I shot many more images, most showing the kayak following the shark, but all lacked the power of that first image of the great white tracking the kayak.
55′ Snake January 15, 2013
Posted by tkcollier in Cool photos, Enviroment.Tags: Environment, Nature, Snake, Wildlife
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This picture is claimed to be from Malaysia, where workers cutting a road through the jungle inadvertently killed this estimated to be 120 year-old snake with the pictured excavator. The driver supposedly felt so bad that he cried at what he had done.
17′ Florida Python – The hunt is on for a new record January 13, 2013
Posted by tkcollier in Cool photos, Enviroment.Tags: burmese pythons, Environment, everglades national park, florida everglades, Nature, Python
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Some estimate that nearly 150,000 pythons are living in the Florida Everglades. Officials say the Burmese pythons are eating wildlife and with no natural predator, the population is overwhelming. The Everglades have become crowded with the snakes and the pythons have started to move into nearby neighborhoods. Last year, a Burmese python was caught and registered more than 17 feet long and 160 pounds. The catch set a new Everglades National Park record.
via Florida Python Hunt Launched to Curb Slithering Population – ABC News.
Vanishing Act: Camouflage in Nature January 10, 2013
Posted by tkcollier in Books, Cool photos, Enviroment.Tags: Cool photos, Environment, Nature
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In this astonishing new book, legendary wildlife photographer Art Wolfe turns to one of nature’s most fundamental survival techniques: the vanishing act. His portraits show animals and insects disappearing into their surroundings, using deceptions, disguises, lures, and decoys to confuse the eye of both predator and prey. Click on this link and hit the “Slideshow” option and see how many you can find.
Vanishing Act: Camouflage in Nature | Art Wolfe Stock Photography 888-973-0011.
How Leaded Gasoline Caused Our Violent Crime Wave. January 5, 2013
Posted by tkcollier in Enviroment, health, Science & Technology.Tags: Cars, Crime, Environment, Lead
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Starting in the 1960s, America saw a huge increase in levels of violent crime that peaked in the early 1990s, then steadily declined, and continues to decline today. All kinds of theories have been promulgated to explain this peak and decline in crime, and plenty of politicians in the 1990s took credit for it. Lead emissions from automobiles explain 90 percent of the variation in violent crime in America. Toddlers who ingested high levels of lead in the ’40s and ’50s really were more likely to become violent criminals in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.
And with that we have our molecule: tetraethyl lead, the gasoline additive invented by General Motors in the 1920s to prevent knocking and pinging in high-performance engines. As auto sales boomed after World War II, and drivers in powerful new cars increasingly asked service station attendants to “fill ‘er up with ethyl,” they were unwittingly creating a crime wave two decades later.
The use of lead pipes to carry water to wealthy neigh
borhoods is claimed to be one major factor that contributed to the weakening and eventual destruction of the Roman Empire. At least we had the Science to discover our lead folly and correct it, even though much is to still be remediated. But the huge penal/judicial/police industrial complex budget justifications are threatened by such a simple crime source. Turns out criminologists were blaming the wrong Lead, when some accused the music of Led Zeppelin, among others.
Extreme Firewood Stacking December 29, 2012
Posted by tkcollier in Enviroment, Lifestyle.Tags: Environment, Lifestyle, Nature, outdoors, winter
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Firewood keeps you warm, when you’re cutting, hauling, splitting and stacking it, in addition to when you actually burn it. Now that the Winter weather is really here, it is time to reflect on how some other folks have gone beyond just stacking up wood to keep warm. .
How To Properly Stack Firewood – Yellow Bullet Forums. Click for more examples of Extreme Firewood Stacking
More Deaths Caused by Obesity than Hunger December 29, 2012
Posted by tkcollier in Enviroment, health, In The News, Lifestyle.Tags: Environment, excess body weight, health, Hunger, Lifestyle, Obesity
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Obesity has become a bigger threat to global health than child hunger, according to a major study.
More than three million deaths in 2010 were attributable to excess body weight, three times the death toll due to malnutrition.
The largest investigation of disease ever undertaken, published yesterday, also found that high blood pressure, smoking and drinking alcohol have become the world’s biggest health risks.
So-called diseases of the western industrialised nations have become more prevalent as developing nations become more affluent. Fewer infants are dying of starvation in the poorest countries while a fast expanding middle-class in the emerging economies. 
Obesity kills more than hunger in march of ‘progress’ | The Times.
Mt. Everest – In Incredible Composite Detail December 18, 2012
Posted by tkcollier in Cool photos, Enviroment.Tags: Cool photos, Environment, Everest, Extreme Sports, Nature, outdoors
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This gigapixel image of the Khumbu glacier was captured by David Breashears during the spring of 2012, from the Pumori viewpoint near Mount Everest. The Khumbu Icefall is clearly visible here, and one can easily see the hustle and bustle of Everest Base Camp below.
Click the image to enter gigapixel navigation, then use the controls at the bottom of the screen to zoom and pan and find climbers on the glacier and around the base camp tents, which will give you perspective on the scale of what you are viewing.
via Khumbu Glacier – Mt. Everest – The Glaciers of the Himalayas.
Arctic Ocean Flowers December 15, 2012
Posted by tkcollier in Cool photos, Enviroment, Science & Technology.Tags: Arctic Ice, climate, Cool photos, Environment, Nature, Science
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These spiky little bunches of ice form on thin and new ice in the Arctic Ocean. But these badboys can only form under very special conditions:
1) Calm winds. We can’t have these beauties blown away can we?
2) Cold, cold air. It has to be about 20C less than the water and since seawater freezes around -2C, that means the air must be about -22C or -7.6F. BRRR.
Frost flowers form when newly formed ice sublimates, that is ice changes directly from a solid to a gas totally bypassing the liquid stage. Initially, the water vapor formed by sublimation is the same temperature as the sea ice, but gets quickly cooled by the cold air. The air is then becomes supersaturated with water vapor, which means the air has too water much in it. Air really doesn’t want to hold all that excess water vapor, so when the supersaturated air touches another ice crystal the water vapor quickly turns back into ice. (Click the image to enlarge)
The Dirty Solar Panel Fight Over Clean Energy October 10, 2012
Posted by tkcollier in Economy & Business, Geopolitics.Tags: China, Environment, Renewable Energy, Solar, Solyndra
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Chinese technocrats set out to create an industry that would dominate the world, and they succeeded. They aided solar cell manufacturers with easy credit from state banks—perhaps as much as $18 billion of cheap loans—and, some say, subsidies. As a result of central and local government support, Chinese manufacturers began to expand rapidly. Chinese competitors now own 70% of the world’s wafer-producing capacity.
Make that overcapacity. “Massive subsidies and state intervention have stimulated overcapacity more than 20 times total Chinese consumption and close to double total global demand,” said Milan Nitzschke, president of EU ProSun, in a statement released late last month. The company alleges that 90% of Chinese production had to be exported and that Beijing used subsidies to keep its manufacturers in business.
The powerful Chinese National Development and Reform Commission wants to see two-thirds of panel makers go out of business. Only the largest producers, which are presently nonviable, will survive.
In short, central government technocrats, to salvage their industrial policy, will now have to destroy what they worked so hard to create.
Civilization’s Tools, Just Add People – Open Source Ecology September 22, 2012
Posted by tkcollier in cool stuff, Enviroment, Science & Technology.Tags: Civilization, Environment, Science & Technology
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If you escaped to a Utopia and wanted to bring the discoveries that feed, build and power our civilizations along, these are the machines you would want to bring with you. The only thing that I see missing is the means to defend your colony from others who may want your technology, rather than build it themselves. Some of these have come to fruition, such as an inexpensive machine that can create 16 earth rammed bricks a minute. This creation should have great 3rd world applications today - in the best Stewart Brand “Whole Earth Catalog” tradition from the 60′s.
The Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) is a modular, DIY, low-cost, high-performance platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comfortset these.
Is This Why Both My Kids Moved to the USA’s Pacific Northwest? September 15, 2012
Posted by tkcollier in Cool photos, Enviroment, Lifestyle.Tags: Cool photos, Environment, Pacific Northwest
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via Purely Pacific Northwest on Vimeo. thanx to Bob Bopp from the Northeast
Motorcycle Powered By Poop August 26, 2012
Posted by tkcollier in Enviroment, Lifestyle, Technology.Tags: Environment, Motorcycle, Toilet
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Imagine speeding on a bike in the middle of nowhere, when the urge hits and you just have to go! Well, there’s a solution for that!
Japanese toilet maker TOTO rolled out a “Toilet Bike Neo” to raise awareness about bathroom emissions and water savings. The eco-friendly three-wheel 250cc motorcycle with a specially customized toilet-shaped seat runs on bio-fuel from the discharge of livestock or waste water.
TOTO has taken the bike on the road in Japan to promote its message. But wait, there’s more to it than meets the eye — this toilet on wheels talks to the rider, keeping him up to date on the latest stock prices or weather reports
via ‘Toilet Bike Neo’ goes where no john has gone before | Photos | National Post.
Return of the disparaged “Limits to Growth” Prediction August 4, 2012
Posted by tkcollier in Economy & Business, Enviroment, Geopolitics.Tags: Drought, Environment, Geopolitics, Global Warming
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Carlton Palmer shares this gem with these comments:
Thoughtful, analysis and personal take from a Financial realist . Civilized not a Rant! Long, Worth the effort. Ex Pat Brit.Jeremy Granthams take on the ongoing food crisis plus the Game changer implications for the Human condition. Of note “the ethanol/gas” idiocy.
Click on the link to download the .pdf file and take the time to read this 22 page analysis
Ex Pat Brit. Jeremy Granthams take on the ongoing food crisis
The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic July 31, 2012
Posted by tkcollier in Enviroment, In The News.Tags: Environment, Global Warming
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$150K, which was the largest funding source for this research came from the Koch foundation. The Koch brothers are billionaire conservative benefactors and probably hadn’t expected or wanted these results.
Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Why it is man-made is based simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase.
It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I’ve analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn’t changed.Hurricane Katrina cannot be attributed to global warming. The number of hurricanes hitting the United States has been going down, not up; likewise for intense tornadoes. Polar bears aren’t dying from receding ice, and the Himalayan glaciers aren’t going to melt by 2035. And it’s possible that we are currently no warmer than we were a thousand years ago, during the “Medieval Warm Period” or “Medieval Optimum,” an interval of warm conditions known from historical records and indirect evidence like tree rings. And the recent warm spell in the United States happens to be more than offset by cooling elsewhere in the world, so its link to “global” warming is weaker than tenuous.
The careful analysis by our team is laid out in five scientific papers now online at BerkeleyEarth.org. That site also shows our chart of temperature from 1753 to the present, with its clear fingerprint of volcanoes and carbon dioxide, but containing no component that matches solar activity.
via The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic – NYTimes.com.
Fix for Bird-Tower Collisions June 13, 2012
Posted by tkcollier in Enviroment.Tags: birds, Environment
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Prompted by a coalition of conservation and business groups, federal aviation officials determined that it is safe to turn off steady tower lights. Flashing safety lights, which are standard equipment on antennas, are just as visible to pilots and don’t endanger birds, FAA technical experts reported last month.
In a test of the new lighting in Michigan, bird deaths dropped by more than half during 20 days of peak songbird migration, researchers at Central Michigan University and the federal wildlife service reported in 2009 in the journal Ecological Applications.”The beautiful thing about this is you turn off these steadily burning red lights and within minutes the birds leave,” said avian ecologist Joelle Gehring at Michigan State University. “It is an immediate effect.”
Up to 15 billion birds are estimated to be in North America in the spring and up to 30 billion in the fall.
USA has Plenty More Fish in the Sea June 8, 2012
Posted by tkcollier in Business, Enviroment, Food.Tags: Environment, Seafood, Sustainability
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On May 14th the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that a record six federal fisheries returned to health last year. After a decade of similar progress, 86% of America’s roughly 250 federally monitored commercial fish stocks were not subject to overfishing; 79% were considered healthy.
The recent recovery of species, including New England scallops, mid-Atlantic bluefish and summer flounder and Pacific lingcod, is the result. This signals another truth: given a break, the marine environment can often replenish itself spectacularly. America’s fisheries are probably now managed almost as well as the world’s best, in Norway, Iceland, New Zealand and Australia
via Fish stocks: Plenty more fish in the sea | The Economist.
Some corals like it hot: Heat stress may help coral reefs survive climate change March 31, 2012
Posted by tkcollier in Enviroment, In The News.Tags: Coral Reefs, Environment, Global Warming, Ocean
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“Until recently, it was widely assumed that coral would bleach and die off worldwide as the oceans warm due to climate change,” says lead author Jessica Carilli, a post-doctoral fellow in Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation’s (ANSTO) Institute for Environmental Research. “This would have very serious consequences, as loss of live coral — already observed in parts of the world — directly reduces fish habitats and the shoreline protection reefs provide from storms.”
“Even through the warming of our oceans is already occurring, these findings give hope that coral that has previously withstood anomalously warm water events may do so again,” says Carilli. “While more research is needed, this appears to be good news for the future of coral reefs in a warming climate.”
via Some corals like it hot: Heat stress may help coral reefs survive climate change.
Moonbow over Iceland November 15, 2011
Posted by tkcollier in Cool photos, Enviroment.Tags: Cool photos, Environment
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moonbow_vetter_1200.jpg JPEG Image, 1200×800 pixels – Scaled 93%.
Thanks to Bob Bopp, who explains ” This is from NASA’s photo of the day site. It shows the Skogarfoss waterfall in Iceland. The colorful arc of light on the left is due to drops that have drifted off from the waterfall and are now illuminated by the nearly full Moon. High above are the faint green streaks of aurora. In the background is a beautiful starscape that includes the Big Dipper.”
Para Gliding with Hawks September 17, 2011
Posted by tkcollier in Enviroment, Video.Tags: Environment, Extreme Sports
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It was shot at the historic Torrey Pines Glider Port and Blossom Valley in San Diego County. Thanks to Mike Douso
Latin America’s blind love with China may be over September 9, 2011
Posted by tkcollier in Economy & Business, Enviroment, Geopolitics.Tags: China, Environment, Latin America, United States
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Barbosa, who served as ambassador to Washington during the Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva government and now heads the foreign trade council of Brazil’s powerful FIESP industrialists federation, said Brazilian executives working for Chinese firms are also complaining about “long work days, frequent overtime, teleconferences in the wee hours, and production goals that are unrealistic and non-negotiable.”
As a result, 42 percent of Brazilian executives working for Chinese firms quit their jobs in their first year, he said, quoting a story in the daily Folha de Sao Paulo. Barbosa concluded that China’s business practices “should be followed with attention” by government authorities, labor unions and business associations.
Almost simultaneously, a new study by the United Nations Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), “Overview of Latin America’s insertion in the world economy,” shows that 87 percent of Latin America’s exports to Asia — mainly China — are raw materials, while only 13 percent are manufactured goods.
By comparison, 60 percent of Latin America’s exports to the United States are manufactured goods, and the remaining 40 percent raw materials, the study says.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/07/2395293/latin-americas-blind-love-with.html#ixzz1XT8lszI6
Citing an article in The Economist on China’s investments in Africa, Barbosa says that China “is destroying parks and forests in search of mineral and agricultural resources, and routinely violates the most elementary labor laws. Roads and Hospitals built by the Chinese are badly finished, among other things because their construction companies pay bribes to local officials.”
via Latin America’s blind love with China may be over – Andres Oppenheimer – MiamiHerald.com.
