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POPSHealthy Monday: Canada Joins Meatless Monday Movement Could this happen here in the biggest meat consuming countries in the world? Don’t we care enough about our health to cut meat out of our diets at least one day a week? Most of our health costs stem from eating red meat. Most of our food costs stem from feeding cattle. Doesn’t it make economic as well as heatlh sense to cut down on our red meat consumption? Red meat again linked to cancer risk: http://www.foodnavigator.com/Science-Nutrition/Red-meat-again-linked-to-cancer-risk-Study How to reduce your red meat consumption: http://www.causecast.org/news_items/8699-how-to-reduce-your-red-meat-consumption The growing case against red meat: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1887266,00.html
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POPSAn Open Letter to the Council of the American Physical Society Studies of a variety of natural processes, including ocean cycles and solar variability, indicate that they can account for variations in the Earth’s climate on the time scale of decades and centuries. Current climate models appear insufficiently reliable to properly account for natural and anthropogenic contributions to past climate change, much less project future climate. The APS supports an objective scientific effort to understand the effects of all processes – natural and human --on the Earth’s climate and the biosphere’s response to climate change, and promotes technological options for meeting challenges of future climate changes, regardless of cause. List of 160 signers of the APS petition available
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POPS Meat creates half of all greenhouse gases People are cutting down rain forests to make grazing land for cattle, or to grow soya beans for cattle to eat. Now the numbers of methane emitting livestock are orders of magnitude greater than they were only 50 years ago.
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POPSStop Using Toilet Paper: Get a Blue Bidet Even eliminating a few rolls of toilet paper in your household each month could have major implications worldwide when you consider that each roll of toilet paper produced uses: * 1.5 pounds of wood * 37 gallons of water * 1.3 KWH of electricity * Harmful chlorine, sulfur and calcium carbonate
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POPSSperm Whale Classified Carbon Neutral Prior analysis of whale carbon dioxide emissions attributes 25 percent of carbon dioxide emissions total to the animals in the Southern Ocean region. Subsequent computation lowers the whales’ carbon dioxide emissions estimate to 0.3 percent, which is equivalent to 17 million tons of carbon a year. Lavery and team explain that there are low levels of iron in the Southern Ocean, and the sperm whales each contribute about 10 grams of iron to the surface. Since the iron comes from the whales’ waste material, it takes the form of liquid plumes, effectively acting as a fertilizer and encouraging growth of plankton. Depending on the exact values and environmental conditions, sperm whales can then be classified “either a net carbon sink or as carbon-neutral,” Discovery writes.
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POPSYour Babies Are Killing Our Planet!
Monday, October 26, 2009 Moonbattery in the U.K: "The worst thing that you or I can do for the planet is to have children" From the U.K. Guardian: Fewer British babies would mean a fairer planet. The worst thing that you or I can do for the planet is to have children. If they behave as the average person in the rich world does now, they will emit some 11 tonnes of CO every year of their lives. In their turn, they are likely to have more carbon-emitting children who will make an even bigger mess. If Britain is to meet the government's target of an 80% reduction in our emissions by 2050, we need to start reversing our rising rate of population growth immediately. And if that makes sense, why not start cutting population everywhere? Are condoms not the greenest technology of all? Actually, if you ask a true ghoul, it would be abortion, not condoms. In fact, scratch abortion, just cull all humans without discriminating based on anything other than productivity
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POPSWhere in the World is Global Warming a Priority? Sure, there would be a huge transfer of wealth from the developed nations to developing nations, but that’s not what Torethy Frank wants. She says, “There is too much corruption in the government and it goes in people’s pockets. Give the money directly to the people for businesses so we can support ourselves without having to rely on the government.” As David Kreutzer mentions in his Politico chat wrap, there much faster and much less expensive ways to adapt to climate change than trying to change the temperature by capping greenhouse gas emissions. Mosquito nets and attacking breeding grounds of mosquitoes and building levees to protect against potentially rising sea levels are all much cheaper but dramatically more effective than signing on to something that would prohibit these countries to develop.
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POPSStockholm Syndrome: Swedes Held Hostage to CO2 Terrorism Next year, KRAV, Scandinavia’s main organic certification program, will start requiring farmers to convert to low-emissions techniques if they want to display its coveted seal on products, meaning that most greenhouse tomatoes can no longer be called organic. Those standards have stirred some protests. “There are farmers who are happy and farmers who say they are being ruined,” said Johan Cejie, manager of climate issues for KRAV. For example, he said, farmers with high concentrations of peat soil on their property may no longer be able to grow carrots, since plowing peat releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide; to get the organic label, they may have to switch to feed crops that require no plowing.
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POPSIt Has The Stench Of Opportunity By reducing the amount of the potent greenhouse gas released into the air, the projects also potentially could turn cow dung into dollars, if a climate bill before Congress becomes law. "Agriculture and agribusiness is what Greeley is all about," Biggi said. "We needed to take that strong traditional economic base and ... merge it with emerging renewable energy and technology." Waste may be the new energy crop in these parts. But elsewhere, communities are looking anew at power sources such as the sun and wind that may exist in their own backyards.
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POPSFind the Family Footprint! Try this out and find what your family's carbon footprint really is. There are a variety of surveys that can be used to assess your family's carbon footprint. This is a very helpful one from the Environmental Protection Agency.
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POPSOrganic Waste Ethanol Cellulosic ethanol is an exciting technology which promises to convert the abundant sources of organic waste worldwide (kitchen waste, yard waste, paper industry waste, etc.) into green alternative fuel. Unlike traditional ethanol, it won't use food crops or raise food prices. In addition, environmental impact studies have indicated that while traditional ethanol releases more greenhouse gases than burning fossil fuels, cellulosic ethanol could reduce emissions
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POPSWhy Obama Should Not Have Received the Peace Prize — Yet
Any one of these would have been worthy of global praise. Perhaps the Nobel committee can give him half the prize now and withhold the other half until he accomplishes one or more of these crucial missions. robert reich Why Obama Should Not Have Received the Peace Prize YetGiving the Peace Prize to the President before any of these goals has been attained only underscores the paradox of Obama at this early stage of his presidency. He has demonstrated mastery in both delivering powerful rhetoric and providing the nation and the world with fresh and important ways of understanding current challenges. But he has not yet delivered. To the contrary, he often seems to hold back from the fight — temporizing, delaying, or compromising so much that the rhetoric and insight he offers seem strangely disconnected from what he actually does. Yet there’s time. He may yet prove to be one of the best presidents this nation has ever had — worthy not only of the Peace Prize but of every global accol
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