Recently in Environment Category

Pollution coming from Texas is so bad that it offends Oklahoma.From the Houston Chronicle---"Coal-fired power plants in Texas are responsible for dozens of bad air days in neighboring states each year, according to a new analysis released by an environmental group Tuesday. The study, produced by the Sierra Club, attributes as many as 64 days with harmful levels of smog in Oklahoma to Texas' coal plants. It also ties the plants to as many as 20...

The sludge flood in Hungary is disgusting.What you see above has taken place in the town of Ajka which  is 100 miles from Budapest.Industrial sludge burst from an industrial sludge reservoir at an aluminum plant and inundated surrounding areas.At least four people are dead and three are missing. The sludge substance causes burns when it touches the skin.There is concern that the sludge will enter the Danube River and spread to other nations.As nasty and harmful as...

September 22 is the first day of fall.(Above--The 1890 painting Autumn Rain by Julian Alden Weir.)What exactly is fall?Here is a definition.From that defintion--"The autumnal equinox marks the first day of the fall season. On this day, the Sun is again directly over the earth's equator, and daylight lasts 12 hours in the Northern Hemisphere and decreasing. This day is typically recognized as September 22 in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, the first day...

Yesterday, marine scientists from the University of Georgia and the Georgia Sea Grant issued a report that directly contradicts National Incident Command's Happy Talk Report that most of the oil in the Gulf from BP's blowout magically degraded in less than two weeks after getting the well shut in.  In a statement yesterday, Charles Hopkinson, director of Georgia Sea Grant and professor of marine sciences in the University of Georgia Franklin College of Arts and Sciences...

Dr. Susan Shaw, a marine toxicologist and President of the Marine Environmental Research Institute, gave a TED talk in June about BP's unprecedented use of dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico.  After going to the Gulf and seeing the effect of dispersants on oil itself, she has determined that the combination is actually more toxic than just leaving the oil alone, and that dispersed oil kills more sea life faster.  Her talk confirms all our worst fears,...

Newton's First Law states: An object's inertia causes it to continue moving the way it is moving unless it is acted upon by an unbalanced force to change its motion. In the simplest of terms, this means an object (like a passive-aggressive GOP body politik) will always continue moving at its current speed (slowly or not at all as the party of "no"), and in its current direction (down into the muck) until some...

At this point in our weekend forecast, even the waterfowl have to be saying ENOUGH with all the rain we've had for the past several days, and it's supposed to continue!If you were lucky enough to be able to leave work early yesterday for the start of the holiday weekend, you probably experienced the flash flooding and poor visibility in various parts of the city. You may have driven by the bayous and seen for...

I have an idea to help pay for the oil spill cleanup. The Feds can sell corporate sponsorships, like sports arenas and stadiums do. The government agencies involved are already doing BP's bidding at every turn thus far, they might as well bring in some revenue to help defray the costs. There's the BP/EPA, who ordered that a less toxic dispersant than Corexit be used--almost a month ago. Corexit is still being dumped into the...

Same song, different verse:"A leak from Chevron's underground oil pipeline may have gone undetected for hours as it spilled 50 gallons of crude a minute Saturday into Salt Lake City's Red Butte Creek...Chevron pledged to clean up the 6-mile mess, but the company could not quantify he damage. As of late Saturday, Chevron said the leak had been stopped. But company representatives could not say when it began, how much oil spilled into city waterways...

From the New Orleans Times- Picayune:Something else to keep in mind:"The carcasses of more than 35,000 birds and 1,000 sea otters were found at the Exxon Valdez site, according to its Trustee Council website, which estimated that the actual toll was "250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, up to 22 killer whales, and billions of salmon and herring eggs."And this spill is an Exxon Valdez every 5-10 days, according to...