Category: Environment & Weather

Peddlers win

If you walk 1.5 miles, Mr. Goodall calculates, and replace those calories by drinking about a cup of milk, the greenhouse emissions connected with that milk (like methane from the dairy farm and carbon dioxide from the delivery truck) are just about equal to the emissions from a typical car making the same trip. And if there were two of you making the trip, then the car would definitely be the more planet-friendly way to go.

These results would vary, of course, depending on exactly what kind of car you’re using and what kind of food you eat (or, if you’re going by pedicab, what kind of food your cabbie eats). Michael Bluejay, who’s done some number-crunching at BicycleUniverse.info, says that walking is actually worse than driving if you replace the calories with food in the standard American diet and if the car gets more than 24 miles per gallon. He calculates that bicycling is a win for the environment because it’s 117 percent more efficient (in calories expended per distance) than walking is, but he’s assuming one cyclist on a regular streamlined bike, not a cabbie pulling two other people in a pedicab dealing with lot more friction and air resistance.

TierneyLab

Pointer via Freakonomics.

America’s 50 Greenest Cities

Popular Science rates cities for environmental quality.

We used raw data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Geographic Society’s Green Guide, which collected survey data and government statistics for American cities of over 100,000 people in more than 30 categories, including air quality, electricity use and transportation habits.

Albuquerque is 16th. Portland, Oregon, is number one.

Link via Coyote Gulch.

The Environment

There were, according to the League of Conservation Voters, 15 key votes on the environment in the Senate during 2007.

Senator Hillary Clinton voted the environmentalist side 11 times and was absent for four votes.

Senator Barack Obama voted the environmentalist side 10 times, against once, and was absent for four votes.

Senator John McCain was absent for all 15 votes.

Total Lunar Eclipse Tonight

On Wednesday evening, February 20th, the full Moon over the Americas will turn a delightful shade of red and possibly turquoise, too. It’s a total lunar eclipse—the last one until Dec. 2010.

The Sun goes down. The Moon comes up. You go out and look at the sky. Observing the eclipse is that easy. Maximum eclipse, and maximum beauty, occurs at 10:26 pm EST (7:26 pm PST).

NASA

[Reposted from yesterday.]

Wow!

I’m not usually a weather wimp — well, except for lightning — but we just had a sustained gust of wind here at Casa NewMexiKen that got my attention. I mean it was almost like having the Big Bad Wolf out there huffing and puffing. They’re forecasting gusts to 50, but I have to think this particular gust saw that and raised it 10 or 20.

An inch or snow fell in the last hour. More overnight.

Good news

John Fleck reports on the good news in our otherwise very dry winter:

As of Friday, snowpack in the high country that feeds the Rio Grande headwaters was 59 percent above normal, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Snow in the headwaters of the San Juan is 50 percent above normal, and snowpack in the mountains that feed the Pecos is 25 percent above normal.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Down here at 5,000-6,000 feet, less than a quarter inch of precip in six weeks. (Though I had a pretty little dusting of snow yesterday morning). Dry, dry, dry.

Paper or plastic

You do know that the answer to the question, “Paper or plastic?” is paper, right?

Better yet, take your own recyclable containers.

More:

The Whole Foods Market chain said Tuesday that it would stop offering plastic grocery bags, giving customers instead a choice between recycled paper or reusable bags.

A rising number of governments and retailers are banning plastic bags, or discouraging their use, because of concerns about their environmental impact. San Francisco banned plastic bags last year unless they are of a type that breaks down easily. China announced a crackdown on plastic bags a few weeks ago, while other governments, including New York City’s, are making sure retailers offer plastic bag recycling.
. . .

Critics complain that the bags are bad for the environment because they are made from petroleum, are typically tossed after one use, fill landfills, and float into trees, rooftops, roadways and oceans.

They also do not break down easily in a landfill.

Hey, it’s all too little too late, but let’s make an effort at least.
The New York Times

Costco and Ikea have already eliminated plastic bags.

What I’m reading

I received The World Without Us by Alan Weisman today and am only about one-third through, but it is a well-paced, interesting natural history.

The premise is what would happen if humanity were removed from the planet, but everything else, including all other creatures, remained in place. How long would our presence even be recognizable? In some instances it would not be long. Indeed, this book should put an end to those doomsday scenario movies with people living in the New York City subways. Without their hundreds of massive electric pumps, the subway tunnels would flood with the first good rain.

A good read, one of five nominees for the National Book Award for nonfiction for 2007.

Mars in the Corner Pocket

Scientists are growing more excited about the possibility of witnessing, for the first time, a celestial pool shot that would do Fast Eddie Felsen proud: An asteroid they first spotted last month may slam into Mars on Jan. 30.

The estimated odds of a hit are steadily improving — originally 1 in 350, upgraded Thursday to 1 in 75, tremendously high by space standards. Astronomers have their fingers crossed. Though they’ve seen bits of a busted comet rain down on Jupiter, they’ve never observed an asteroid-planet collision and are thrilled with what they might learn.

The hunk of rock in question, which scientists have whimsically named 2007 WD5, is about 160 feet across, roughly the size of the one that caused the “Tunguska event,” flattening millions of trees and killing wildlife over hundreds of square miles in remote Siberia when it blew up in the atmosphere in 1908 with a force equivalent to a 15-megaton nuclear bomb.

The Lede has more.

Bracing for a Christmas Without Lights (or a Fridge)

The ice storm has been gone for a week, but tens of thousands of homes and businesses remain cold and dark in Oklahoma, Kansas and adjoining states. Some utility officials say they doubt all the lights will be back on by Christmas.

So what’s taking so long?

The Lede explains. NewMexiKen has friends in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, who have been without electricity since December 9th.

The eco bottle

The Numbers Guy takes a look at the new water bottles.

It’s not uncommon for bottled-water companies to tout the purity of their waters. But one giant bottler has gone one step further: boasting about the bottles themselves.

Nestlé claims it offers the lightest half-liter bottles in the U.S. market. Earlier this year, it introduced new, sculpted bottles with labels stating they contain “30% less plastic.” On Web sites for its brands Poland Spring, Ozarka, Arrowhead and Ice Mountain, Nestlé clarifies that this isn’t a 30% reduction from the old model, which is still in distribution; instead, its new “Eco-Shape Bottle” has 30% less plastic “than the average half-liter bottle.”