Category: Environment & Weather

Top 25 Cities for Clean Air (and Dirty)

The top metropolitan areas for clean air.

  1. Cheyenne, Wyo.
  2. Santa Fe-Espanola, N.M.
  3. Honolulu
  4. Great Falls, Mont.
  5. Farmington, N.M.
  6. Flagstaff, Ariz.
  7. Tucson, Ariz.
  8. Anchorage, Alaska
  9. Bismarck, N.D.
  10. Albuquerque, N.M.

And dirty.

  1. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside, Calif.
  2. Pittsburgh-New Castle, Pa.
  3. Bakersfield, Calif.
  4. Birmingham-Hoover-Cullman, Ala.
  5. Detroit-Warren-Flint, Mich.
  6. Cleveland-Akron-Elyria, Ohio
  7. Visalia-Porterville, Calif.
  8. Cincinnati-Middletown-Wilmington, Ohio-Ken.-Ind.
  9. Indianapolis-Anderson-Columbus, Ind.
  10. St. Louis-St. Charles-Farmington, Mo.-Ill.

Source: American Lung Association via WebMD

Weather forecast: Southwest, hotter and drier

Assessment of projected climate change for North America:

All of North America is very likely to warm during this century, and the annual mean warming is likely to exceed the global mean warming in most areas. In northern regions, warming is likely to be largest in winter, and in the southwest USA largest in summer. The lowest winter temperatures are likely to increase more than the average winter temperature in northern North America, and the highest summer temperatures are likely to increase more than the average summer temperature in the southwest USA.

Annual mean precipitation is very likely to increase in Canada and the northeast USA, and likely to decrease in the southwest USA. In southern Canada, precipitation is likely to increase in winter and spring, but decrease in summer.

Snow season length and snow depth are very likely to decrease in most of North America, except in the northernmost part of Canada where maximum snow depth is likely to increase.

IPCC WG1 AR4 Final Report

Forget global warming; Bring back global buzzing

Another article on the disappearing bees, this one from The New York Times. It includes this:

Honeybees are arguably the insects that are most important to the human food chain. They are the principal pollinators of hundreds of fruits, vegetables, flowers and nuts. The number of bee colonies has been declining since the 1940s, even as the crops that rely on them, such as California almonds, have grown. . . .

Bee colonies have been under stress in recent years as more beekeepers have resorted to crisscrossing the country with 18-wheel trucks full of bees in search of pollination work. These bees may suffer from a diet that includes artificial supplements, concoctions akin to energy drinks and power bars. In several states, suburban sprawl has limited the bees’ natural forage areas.

The Complicated Equation for Going Green

A good, thoughtful rundown on what going green can achieve — and what it can cost — from The Wall Street Journal (free). It begins:

Going green is the new black in 2007. Advice abounds on how to cut your carbon dioxide output and do your part in the battle against global warming. But how much does a person have to spend to go green–and what kind of environmental impact would that spending actually have?

The U.S. is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, accounting for 25% of the world’s total. The average American is responsible for about 20 metric tons a year of CO2 equivalent (CO2e), a standard measure of greenhouse gases. That’s about 40,000 pounds of CO2e a year, per capita, a far greater number than that of any other industrialized country.

We set out to evaluate a few of the in-vogue recommendations based on what they cost and what they’d do for the environment. In each area we offer up three levels of feasibility–hard, medium and easy. Where possible, we’ve crunched the numbers to estimate how much a change would cost, how many pounds of CO2e each step can save and the percentage each would knock off one person’s emissions.

Forecast: Hot and Dry

Next 100 Years

In a nutshell, the dry lands will become more arid, and the humid lands, wetter. And the drying of the West will be accompanied by blast-furnace heat: IPCC’s new report includes an astonishing prediction that temperatures in the American West will increase by an average of nine degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century.

La Niña events, Seager added, will continue to influence rainfall in the Borderlands, but building from a more arid foundation, they could produce the West’s worst nightmares: droughts on the scale of the medieval catastrophes that contributed to the notorious collapse of the complex Anasazi societies at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde during the twelfth century.

AlterNet: Global Warming Hits Southwest

Are cellphones killing bee colonies?

Bees

The world’s bee colonies are dying mysteriously, and a study from Landau University suggests that mobile phones may be to blame. The colonies are subject to “Colony Collapse Disorder,” (science-ese for “we don’t know where all these bees have gone”) and the disorder accounts for the death of anywhere from 50-70 percent of bee colonies. Since bees pollinate most crops, flowers and fruiting trees, the end of bees is seriously bad news for the world’s food supply.

It’s been long understood that bees respond to electromagnetic radiation. Dr Jochen Kuhn at Germany’s Landau University has shown that bees don’t return to their hives when cellphones are present. The study doesn’t prove that cellphones are responsible for CCD, but it does provide evidence that mobile phones are implicated in the death of hives.

Boing Boing

Wow, this is really scary. I mean bees are so basic that the shorthand for reproduction is “birds and bees.” Come to think of it, I think I noticed fewer bees around Casa NewMexiKen last summer.

Cell phones couldn’t kill ants or roaches or mosquitos. No, it had to be bees.

Photo by the Sonoran Son.

The Great Dust Storm

On the 14th day of April of 1935,
There struck the worst of dust storms that ever filled the sky.
You could see that dust storm comin’, the cloud looked deathlike black,
And through our mighty nation, it left a dreadful track.

From Oklahoma City to the Arizona line,
Dakota and Nebraska to the lazy Rio Grande,
It fell across our city like a curtain of black rolled down,
We thought it was our judgement, we thought it was our doom.

The radio reported, we listened with alarm,
The wild and windy actions of this great mysterious storm;
From Albuquerque and Clovis, and all New Mexico,
They said it was the blackest that ever they had saw.

From old Dodge City, Kansas, the dust had rung their knell,
And a few more comrades sleeping on top of old Boot Hill.
From Denver, Colorado, they said it blew so strong,
They thought that they could hold out, but they didn’t know how long.

Our relatives were huddled into their oil boom shacks,
And the children they was cryin’ as it whistled through the cracks.
And the family it was crowded into their little room,
They thought the world had ended, and they thought it was their doom.

The storm took place at sundown, it lasted through the night,
When we looked out next morning, we saw a terrible sight.
We saw outside our window where wheat fields they had grown
Was now a rippling ocean of dust the wind had blown.

It covered up our fences, it covered up our barns,
It covered up our tractors in this wild and dusty storm.
We loaded our jalopies and piled our families in,
We rattled down that highway to never come back again.

Lyrics as recorded by Woody Guthrie, RCA Studios, Camden, NJ, 26 Apr 1940
Transcribed by Manfred Helfert
© 1960, Ludlow Music, Inc., New York, NY

More on Black Sunday

Today is the anniversary of Black Sunday, the day in 1935 when a windstorm hit a part of the Great Plains known as the Dust Bowl. When the day started, the weather was sunny and calm. People were on their way home from church, or out visiting friends for lunch, when they saw huge flocks of birds flying south, away from a dark black cloud on the northern horizon. As the cloud approached, people realized that it wasn’t a storm cloud, but a cloud of dirt, blown up by the wind. Witnesses said it was like a black tidal wave came down from the sky. It became as dark as night as soon as the cloud descended. Static electricity stalled cars and shorted out telephone lines. People standing a few yards away from their homes got lost in the darkness, and grabbed onto fence posts to keep from being blown to the ground. It was later estimated that the storm carried 300 million tons of soil through the air.

The Writer’s Almanac

Those on the road had to try to beat the storm home. Some, like Ed and Ada Phillips of Boise City, and their six-year-old daughter, had to stop on their way to seek shelter in an abandoned adobe hut. There they joined ten other people already huddled in the two-room ruin, sitting for four hours in the dark, fearing that they would be smothered. Cattle dealer Raymond Ellsaesser tells how he almost lost his wife when her car was shorted out by electricity and she decided to walk the three-quarters of a mile home. As her daughter ran ahead to get help, Ellsaesser’s wife wandered off the road in the blinding dust. The moving headlights of her husband’s truck, visible as he frantically drove back and forth along the road, eventually led her back

The American Experience

. . . And the old house was just a-vibratin’ like it was gonna blow away. And I started tryin’ to see my hand. And I kept bringin’ my hand up closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and I finally touched the end of my nose and I still couldn’t see my hand. That’s how black it was. And we burned kerosene lamps and Dad lit an old kerosene lamp, set it on the kitchen table and it was just across the room from me, about — about 14 feet. And I could just barely see that lamp flame across the room. That’s how dark it was and it was six o’clock in the afternoon. It was the 14th of April, 1935. The sun was still up, but it was totally black and that was blackest, worst dust storm, sand storm we had durin’ the whole time.

A lot of people died. A lot of children, especially, died of dust pneumonia. They’d take little kids and cover ’em with sheets and sprinkle water on the sheets to filter the dust out. . . .

Melt White, The American Experience

See earlier entry by NewMexiKen with photo.

And, again, I strongly recommend The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan.

Quacks me up

Amusing photo.

And this, amazing photo.

Meanwhile:

An angry Romanian doctor has cut off a patient’s penis during surgery and chopped it into small pieces.

Surgeon Naum Ciomu was operating on patient Nelu Radonescu, 36, to correct a testicular malformation when he suddenly lost his temper.

Grabbing a scalpel, he sliced off the penis in front of shocked nursing staff, and then placed it on the operating table where he chopped it into small pieces before storming out of the operating theatre at Bucharest hospital.

AOL Lifestyle

Couldn’t he have just counted to ten? Great plot for Grey’s Anatomy, though, especially if the victim is one of those asinine male doctors. Karev, Shepherd or O’Malley, any will do.

Some good advice:

1. Styrofoam cups
Styrofoam is forever. It’s not biodegradable.
* I can’t remember the last time I used a styrofoam cup but for all those takeaway coffee drinkers, it’s worth finding an alternative.

2. Paper towels
Paper towels waste forest resources, landfill space, and your money.
* I couldn’t imagine going without paper towels. I do buy the eco friendly variety but I should probably use old clothes or towels to clean up.

3. Bleached coffee filters
Dioxins, chemicals formed during the chlorine bleaching process, contaminate groundwater and air and are linked to cancer in humans and animals.
* I’m not a coffee drinker which looks to be a good thing if this is what is used to make coffee.

Top 10 Products to Avoid | Buy Organic

And:

Want to stay safe on the roads? Then avoid listening to Guns N Roses, Meat Loaf and Bruce Springsteen behind the wheel.

The trio are among the artists featured on a top 10 of tracks that get people’s blood pumping and in the mood to drive aggressively.
. . .

It includes classic rock tracks, such as Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out Of Hell” and Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” as well as tracks such as Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades” and Guns N Roses’ “Paradise City.”

Reuters via Yahoo! News

Niagara didn’t fall

An enormous ice dam formed at the source of the Niagara River on the eastern shore of Lake Erie on March 29, 1848. Just after midnight, the thunderous sound of water surging over the great falls at Niagara came to a halt. The eery silence persisted throughout the day and into the next evening until the waters of Lake Erie broke through the blockage and resumed their course down the river and over the falls.

Today in History from the Library of Congress

Heat Invades Cool Heights Over Arizona Desert

Timothy Egan writes in The New York Times that climate change is having a major impact on the southwest’s “sky islands.” A short excerpt:

The American Southwest has been warming for nearly 30 years, according to records that date to the late 19th century. And the region is in the midst of an eight-year drought. Both developments could be within the range of natural events.

But what has convinced many scientists that the current spate of higher temperatures is not just another swing in the weather has been the near collapse of the sky islands and other high, formerly green havens that poke above the desert.

Wild America

NewMexiKen has been reading Return to Wild America: A Yearlong Search for the Continent’s Natural Soul by Scott Weidensaul. It’s a travel narrative detailing Weidensaul’s reprise, 50 years later, of the famous trip and book by naturalists Roger Tory Peterson and James Fisher. Wild America had inspired Weidensaul as a boy. At times he inspires us now.

Visiting many of the same places as the original, Return to Wild America brings us bad news but also much that is good: species that have recovered, land that is being preserved. Faithful to Peterson, we read descriptions of, frankly, more birds than I care about, but still the book conveys the wonder of North America that makes one want to throw the sleeping bag into the car and take off for Newfoundland, or the Everglades, or Kartchner Cavern.

Inhofe: Looking for the third digit in his IQ

This from the Daily Howler:

In today’s Post, Dana Milbank captures one small part of Inhofe’s disordered performance:

MILBANK (3/22/07): Inhofe informed Gore that scientists are “radically at odds with your claims.” Displaying a photograph of icicles in Buffalo, Inhofe demanded: “How come you guys never seem to notice it when it gets cold?”

Could Inhofe possibly be this stupid?

Simple answer: Yes.