Daily Archives: December 12, 2008

Image from World Meteorological Organization

Forty percent: That is the share of annual oceanic carbon dioxide uptake accounted for by the Southern Ocean. Given that oceans comprise Earth’s largest carbon sink, that is not an insignificant figure; indeed, this sole region is responsible for absorbing a staggering amount of anthropogenic emissions — close to 1 petagram (1 Pg = 1,000,000,000,000,000 grams) per year. Which makes it all the more worrisome that ocean acidification is <a href=”http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/11/southern-ocean-acidif

Photos from Today’s Zaman (left) and BELBİM (right).

The obvious inconveniences aside, there’s something to be said for living in a place where both random and rolling power outages occur with some frequency. It seems to foster neighborliness and camaraderie, as everyone gathers at a home that still has electricity or reminds themselves that a fun evening can actually be had without TV or the Internet. (We spent our last prolonged outage drinking <a href=”http://pl

Shares in The Abundance Pepper Promote Crop Diversity
With growing conditions varying tremendously from place to place, it seems insane that the majority of seeds grown in the US come either from the Pacific Northwest, or Japan, Holland or Israel. Matthew has noted before how saving seeds is a critical strategy for adapting to climate change. Just as open-source programming makes for better software, so a living network of farmers, gardeners and plant breeders is our best bet for maintaining a dynamic and secure gene p

I am so happy that I got them into Youtube, because it appears that enough people complained about the Coal Carolers that they have skipped town. Some thought they were just stupid, but others implied that rewriting Silent Night was sacreligious. Rachel Maddo

A couple of weeks ago we announced that applications were open for the MINI E field trial —by the way, the deadline for which has been extended to December 24th—and I for one was a bit disappointed that I couldn’t participate as I have no garage to install the car charging syst

The European Union has outlined a new plan to fight global warming. Which is a good thing. The less good thing is that according to the views of many scientists the measures will not bring about enough of a reduction in carbon emissions to really mitigate the worst effects of global warming.

Here are the broad stroke outlines of the so-called 20/20/20 plan:

Christine previously covered the recent success of Beth Terry’s campaign to convince Brita in North America to take back and recycle their filters; Vanessa Farquharson of Green as a Thistle and the National Post interviews her and learns how it happened. It is an excellent guide for aspiring activists. Vanessa writes:

:: Who would be able to resist a Toaster Pastry i-Pod Cozy? Make this and other totally diggable DIY holiday gifts.

:: Getting your daily dose of veggies can be delicious. The proof is in Kelly’s creamy Cauliflower Gorgonzola Soup.

:: The cold weather is conducive to boring weekend nights spent in, glued to the tube. Try something different–and energy efficient–by calling over your friends for a <a href=”http://plan

The guys at Illuminati say that this frame will be “elegantly covered with the composite body shell”. Photo: IMW

In case you haven’t yet tuned in to the Science Channel’s new series Brink you should tune in this Friday, December 12th at 10 PM—this week’s show will be of particular interest to those of you interested in improving the fuel economy of our cars. This week host Josh Zepps will be profiling Illuminati Motor Works , who are attempting to win the Automotive X Prize.

Here are some of t

Photo via NNECAPA

The Consumer Electronics Association has conducted a survey that shows a rising consumer demand for green gadgets. A full one third of those surveyed said they plan to buy green versions of their gadgets in the next year.

Read on for more of the interesting results from the survey.