Chronological environment Weblog/Links

"Turf Wars" in New Yorker: why we love lawns July 16, 2008 :: Good essay on the history of our ridiculous infatuation with green squares of foreign grass. One of the most popular herbicides was — and continues to be — 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic...

Wilderness Lake to Tailings Pond: Rubber-stamp June 17, 2008 :: Federal Bureaucrats are allowed to redefine lakes and rivers as "tailing containment facilities" (aka toxic waste dumps for mining debris) and are doing just that to a bunch of lakes and...

US to shoot down own spy satellite February 15, 2008 :: All satellites' orbits decay. They will all eventually crash into Earth (even the moon, although that's a ways away). Knowing this, the US secretly launched a spy satellite whose "rocket...

Kananaskis Clearcutting January 08, 2008 :: See some pictures here. If you thought the clearcutting in the Ghost was bad, check this shit. The logging of the Kananaskis has started by decimating the Lusk Pass area near...

MEC silently removes polycarbonate bottles December 07, 2007 :: Ryan sends me this Globe and Mail article noting that MEC [Ranting at MEC] has silently pulled all their polycarbonate Nalgene bottles (the coloured or clear ones, NOT the filmy white LDPE...

No Grizzlies June 12, 2007 :: There are half as many grizzlies in Alberta than previous thought, it has finally been learned. (The Alberta government did surveys some years ago and refused to release the results; I guess...

Cell-Phones causing bee deaths? April 16, 2007 :: The mysterious recent collapsing of most bee-colonies in the US may be caused by cell-phones, a new study suggests. ``[some scientists] are putting forward the theory that radiation ...

Morton: pine bettle "emergency" April 16, 2007 :: Ted Morton announced that the pine-beetle infestation in (mostly) northern Alberta is an "emergency" in order to tap into extra funds to start slashing and burning. Ralph Carter [U...

Branch: recycled yuppie-ware March 09, 2007 :: From boingboing: yuppie-leaning house (etcetera) wares made largely from recycled/reused stuff. This thing is sort of neat.

US honey-bee die-off accelerating February 13, 2007 :: From 1971 to 2006 approximately one half of the U.S. honey-bee colonies have vanished, but the rate of attrition reached new proportions in the year 2006, which were alarming to many...

Shocking: more work, less time with family February 13, 2007 :: Workers on average spend 45 fewer minutes per day with family now than in 1986, since workers on average are working more now (than ever before; humans have never worked more hours per year...

UCS: ExxonMobil funding anti-global-warming groups January 05, 2007 :: The Union of Concerned Scientists has released a report detailing that oil giant ExxonMobil has funnelled at least $16 million over 7 years to 43 advocacy groups who "seek to confuse the...

Some Euro bears have stopped hibernating January 04, 2007 :: Brown bears in northern Spain have stopped hibernating due to the increasing warmth of the Earth. In a December in which bumblebees, butterflies and even swallows have been...

Entire US food chain mercury-contaminated September 21, 2006 :: A report by the National Wildlife Federation concludes that animals at all levels of the food chain, including species commonly eaten by humans, are contaminated with more mercury than ...

800k y.o. ice cores confirm: still warmest ever September 08, 2006 :: Carbon dioxide levels are substantially higher now than at any time in the last 800,000 years, the latest study of ice drilled out of Antarctica confirms. The...

Gravity perturbations measure ice loss August 14, 2006 :: Pretty cool: a pair of satellites is being used to measure subtle changes in the Earth's gravitational field and hence changes in the mass of ice in Greenland and Antartica. Not cool...

GM golf-course grass escapes... August 14, 2006 :: ...why not try the first ever GM impact assessment. Fucking retarded could better manage our environment. Oh, wait... Jay Reichman and colleagues at the US Environmental Protection...

Indian state bans Coke, Pepsi August 14, 2006 :: After repeatedly finding high levels of pesticides in Coke and Pepsi products, the Indian state of Kerala is disallowing the two companies from operating any longer. "We have...