Environment

Disclaimer: As a Naturalist and Scientist these are my observations. This may be disturbing to some people as they may have to think of cause and effect. Somewhere in Asia they are laughing their asses off,"Americans will buy anything if you just say it's green and sustainable." Fact is the bamboo is on the other side of the world. Bamboo is green in Asia not here in America. I love bamboo I planted 3 varieties 3 years ago 2 lived and have sprouts someday I may have a stand. Unfortunately what's happening for every bamboo floor put in a house here in the U.S.A. it is directly…

Is Big Box becoming Big Environment? Wall Street Journal reported today that Wal-Mart "is requiring manufacturers to figure out the full environmental costs of making their products, and plans to distill the data into simple green ratings that shoppers will eventually see alongside prices for everything from T-shirts to televisions." The global retail behemoth is "making the move as a way to get ahead of potential U.S. environmental labeling regulations — similar requirements are already popping up in Britain and Japan — and to set a standard on its own favorable terms that the retail…

Climate science is tricky business because the atmosphere and Mother Earth are an eloborate, complex system no one understands.   So how much Earth's climate will warm due to carbon emissions is open to speculation but a new study this week suggests scientists' best predictions about global warming are likely incorrect.  Which means they could be high ... but they could also be really low. The study in Nature Geoscience says that climate models explain only about half of the heating that occurred during a well-documented period of rapid global warming in Earth's ancient past. "In a…

I want to start my first scientific blog, where different environmental questions will be published. Excuse me for my bad English, I try to learn it.. 

Researchers have used genetific modification (GM) to bring salt-tolerant plants a little closer to reality. The research team – based at the University of Adelaide's Waite Campus in Australia – has used a new GM technique to contain salt in parts of the plant where it does less damage. Salinity affects agriculture worldwide, which means the results of this research could impact on world food production and security. The work has been led by researchers from the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics and the University of Adelaide's School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, in…

Mars, Incorporated, the global brand dealing primarily with chocolate, other candy and pet food (1), wants to discuss its cocoa sustainability program as part of a summer-long sustainability exhibition on Mainau Island - a botanical island famed locally for its flora and fauna and located in the middle of Lake Constance, Germany, one of Germany's most popular tourist destinations. The exhibition, which opens today, follows on from the annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Germany last week, in which Mars was a sponsor. The Nobel Laureate Meeting at Lindau, which ended today, saw 23 Nobel…

If you're like us, you are eagerly awaiting those July 4 fireworks displays because you get to blow stuff up using science (not just the US, Canada too, though they picked the wrong day by using July 1 for  Canada Day celebrations) - if only we could have awesome fireworks yet not ruin the planet. Maybe we can.  A new generation of "green" fireworks is trying to take off.  Hint: that's "green" as in environmentally friendly.  And take off as in ... oh, never mind. Fireworks, flares and the other pyrotechnics you love include potassium perchlorate salts (potassium and…

Just when you thought evolution couldn't get attacked by anyone else, a zoologist writing in Science and his colleagues are contending that changing winter conditions due to global warming are causing Scotland's wild Soay sheep to get smaller despite the evolutionary benefits of having a large body.  Yep, climate change can trump natural selection, it turns out.  So much for adapting to the environment.   Too bad Darwin didn't know about CO2.   "Sheep are getting smaller. Well, at least the wild Soay sheep living on a remote Scottish island are. But according to classic…

The rain band near the equator that determines the supply of freshwater to nearly a billion people throughout the tropics and subtropics has been creeping north for more than 300 years,  according to research published in Nature Geoscience.  If the band continues to migrate at just less than a mile (1.4 kilometers) a year, which is the average for all the years it has been moving north, then some Pacific islands near the equator – even those that currently enjoy abundant rainfall – may be drier within decades and starved of freshwater by midcentury or sooner. Global warming?  …

More species can live in a warmer temperature than an ice age. There are more species at the equator than the North and south poles. So why be concerned? Because of the ocean. Not the rise and fall of it but the temperature. Cold and Hot are what run our weather, ocean currents, and protect the earth with currents or flows of energy. We have a valuable resource of methane hydrate frozen on the ocean floor about 400 million trillion cubic feet that's one of many different estimates, anyway a lot, a real lot of this frozen gas. As the ocean warm and this gas is released we have a real problem…