Earth Talk

ChileThis morning, (3/11/10), three strong quakes shook Chile in quick succession. The U.S. Geological Survey measured a 7.2 magnitude quake in Chile's Libertador O'Higgins region, about 124 kilometers from the capital Santiago. "A 7.2-magnitude earthquake hit at 11:39 a.m. local time (9:39 a.m. ET), followed by a 6.9-magnitude quake 16 minutes later, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. A third, measured at magnitude 6.0, came 27 minutes later. (CNN) 

A major 8.8-magnitude earthquake shook Chile in February killed hundreds of people. Read more

Regrowing the EarthI can’t believe this is real. There is a seed bank in the Arctic where 500,000 samples of everything on Earth is stored. You know, in case we blow everything up with a nuclear bomb and the only people who survive can fly around the earth on hover-pods replanting our lost flora after the radioactivity dies down.

They even call it a Doomsday vault in Reuters. It is the most diverse collection of food seeds in history. And I can’t stop thinking about new questions I have. Read more

The EPA is talking back to everyone who is trying to make their climate change and global warming rules nothing more than a twinkle in the environmental eye-

“I'm not in a position where I'm going to stand here and support the idea of EPA not being able to use the Clean Air Act,” said Lisa Jackson, EPA Administrator.

I’ve written about this before and continue to think it is ludicrous- Congress is aggressively trying to restrict the EPA from using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Again: Congress is trying to stop the

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

From REGULATING GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS

With the CLEAN AIR ACT. Read more

Windmills instead of dynamiting mountaintops?In 2007 some artists from New York City went down to the mountains of West Virginia and made a revealing documentary about mountaintop removal mining and the toxic effects. Watch the video.

Along those lines, the Coal River Wind Project is trying to use video, the web and social media to turn one mountaintop removal project into a wind farm. There's something wonderfully playful about the name of the project: the Coal River Wind Project. Wait... coal... river... wind... Read more

Edgar WayburnIt was announced today that last Friday, the conservationist Edgar Wayburn died. He was in his one hundred and fourth year. (1906 – 2010). Dr. Edgar Wayburn, was a five-term president of the Sierra Club. He was one of the 20th century's leading champions for protecting the environment,  preserving  wilderness areas, and safeguarding America's natural heritage. Among Dr. Wayburn's achievements were the important work he did to help win passage of the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which created millions of acres of national parkland. In the 1950s and  1960s, he led the movement to create the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in California. Read more

Fault platesToday, (3-8-10),  Monday,  4:32 a.m, in a pre-dawn hour, local time, while most people slept in their beds, a strong earthquake with a  magnitude of 6 struck eastern Turkey in Elazig province, killing scores people, injuring many more, destroying buildings. Strong destructive earthquakes in Haiti, Japan, Chile,  Taiwan, Sumatra, Indonesia, and now Turkey? What's going on?  Are  earthquakes  becoming as common as hurricanes? Read more

Sugar has slowly made its way across the world into our bloodstreams.Tina McCarthy had a great article this morning on the Care2 network about ”Ten Surprisingly Sugary Foods,” many of which were certainly surprising. It made me think about sugar- where it comes from and why we want it. Her list was of foods you don’t really expect to be sugary- so she didn’t go into things like candy or soda. Count all of those and it’s amazing how ubiquitous sugar is in our society. Sugar, soy, corn and wheat- in a sense, everything beyond that is just a food additive. We love our sugar. But when did it start? Read more

Monsanto is taking over crops seed by seedI grew up in Wisconsin, surrounded by cornfields and cows. Out the window of my high school classes I would see rows of corn all the way to the horizon. The license plate on my first car read “America’s Dairyland.” My family wasn’t in farming, so even though I was surrounded by it, I never knew much about what was going on, or going into the plants that grew around me. After seeing this movie today, I wonder if I was one of the last to grow up surrounded by non-genetically modified food and drink milk that wasn’t laced with growth hormones. Read more

Can we turn this smoke into a sidewalk?We are calling the time period we are in the Great Recession. It’s a pretty good name for headlines, for fear-based news reporting, and for making us all feel better about not having any jobs or credit. As in, it’s not just you; it’s everybody. The thing, though, is that impressive economic growth and ballooning financial markets is not the norm, neither here in the United States of America (no matter how hard we want to pretend otherwise…) nor in any other country. The truth is that modest growth or flat economic indicators are far more common over our history and the history of the world’s economy. And through all of that we have innovated and changed things, and when those innovations have come together they have created incredible spurts of economic growth. Read more

SumatraToday (Mar 5, 2010), the US Geological Survey reported that a strong earthquake with the magnitude of 6.5 struck off the southwest coast of Sumatra, in Indonesia, causing panic, but no threat of a tsunami.  Haiti,  Japan, Chile, Taiwan and now Sumatra, and a second strong earthquake this week  Well, what is going on with this? Is the earth collapsing? No, not according to scientists. Read more