"We pay firefighters to be brave and to protect us, but we don't want them to be reckless. And we don't want them to die saving a piece of property."
Editorial, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, on Fed-OSHA's report on the deadly 2006 Esperanza fire
"A million times over I apologize ... to all of you hardworking business owners, employees, researchers, firemen, investigators, attorneys and all citizens whose property was destroyed, whose holidays were ruined, whose welfare was thwarted, and whose sleep was troubled." Quiet, shy, his hair turning gray at 30, the slightly built Meyerhoff was dwarfed by the angular expanse of the courtroom.
And so a violent chapter in the environmental movement ended - with a whimper. Once feared by some and admired by others for their willingness to use any means necessary, these militants are in decline.
"Radical environmentalism failed," said James Johnston of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. "Whether radical environmentalists admit it or not, they failed."
As autobloggreen.com noted back in April, China was due to pass the United States in amount of CO2 emitted earlier than the previously-expected 2010 date. As our sister site travel blog Gadling noted the other day, that unfortunate mark has come to pass. What an unwinnable race.
New market research finds: The majority of consumers really don't care all that much about the environment. Green simply doesn't has not captured the public imagination. ... The fact is, the amount of media interest given to the environment far exceeds the amount of consumer interest.
Joel Makower has more.
Overlooked and difficult to find, there are hundreds of thousands of U.S. government web sites that can help you accomplish a variety of tasks. At the right federal .gov destination you can locate historical documents, keep tabs on Congressional happenings, view presidential paperwork, and a whole lot more. Keep reading for the most useful U.S. government web sites out there.
For sheer accessibility, USA.gov wins hands-down as the U.S. government's official portal on the Web. You can find all sorts of goodies here: grant information, hundreds of online services (drivers' license renewal, shop government auctions, contact elected officials, etc.), the latest government news, and a ton more.
Related: For more government Web portals, check out FedWorld, Students.gov, Health.gov, or one of the coolest sites I've ever seen - the New York City Maps Portal.
GPO Access, part of the U.S. government printing office, offers you official information from all three branches of the federal government. A few links to note: core documents of U.S. democracy, a huge catalog of government publications, and an A-Z list of federal databases.
Related: You also don't want to miss the GPO's cache of congressional records, public presidential papers, or Ben's Guide.
I could (and frequently do) get lost in the stellar Library of Congress. For instance, you can access state and local government information, browse the gigantic American Memory collection, or view current and historical legislative info courtesy of THOMAS.
Related: The National Archives is a good place to start your historical/genealogical research - you can also view actual scanned-in archival documents, such as the Document for Today.
The CIA World Factbook provides detailed information for (most) every known country, territory, and province in the world. You can also download a printable version.
Related: Find stats at the U.S. Census Bureau, federal data from FedStats, or view the National Atlas.
Forget wasting time sluffing through pages of spammy job search information - the Occupational Outlook Handbook is the real deal. You can find state by state job market information, employment projections, even an A-Z occupations index that will give you an idea of what you should be making in your chosen field.
Related: Don't forget the Social Security Administration or the IRS.
Since I have a budding geology buff in my house, science sites rank high on my list of most useful, and the United States Geological Survey is at the top. You can find all sorts of interesting information here, such as worldwide earthquake updates or the largest earth science library in the world.
Right next to the USGS is NASA, the home of the U.S. space program. This site is so gigantic that it's a bit difficult to summarize; however, my favorite spots have to be the image gallery, the archive of past missions, and the index of NASA World Book encyclopedia articles.
There's also the National Weather Service, the GrayLit Network, the Life Sciences Data Archives, and Science.gov, a portal for all kinds of scientific information.
As previously mentioned, there are literally hundreds of thousands of government web sites that are extremely useful, yet manage to fly somewhat under the radar....these picks are just the tip of the iceberg. What are your favorite government sites? Please share in the comments.
Wendy Boswell, Lifehacker's Weekend Editor, enjoys getting lost in the maze of government web sites. Subscribe to her feature series Technophilia using the Technophilia feed.
By Chris Nelder (w w w . g r e e n c h i p s t o c k s . c o m )
Last week was just full of unpleasant surprises for natural gas supply.
Chris Nelder was researching the issues and it looks like we have some serious supply issues on our hands, starting now and growing worse over the next 20 years or more.
He also have prepared a detailed free report on it, which you can find here But here's the short version.
First, the International Energy Agency (IEA) issued a warning that it's very concerned about an impending supply gap for natural gas.
This is important because about one quarter of our electricity in the U.S. is generated from natural gas, a share that is expected to increase along with demand.
But he does believe that share can be increased. And that spells "higher grid electricity" prices for this country, and an even better outlook for solar and wind generation.
Apparently, receding horizons, massive cost increases, and lack of construction materials and skilled labor have all contributed to delays and cancellations in new power plant construction. It's just not a friendly environment for investing in new plants.
STOP POISONING YOURSELF WITH THE HEALTHY SWEETENER...
Aspartame, the sweetener being used in everything from sodas to salad dressing, may be making us sicker and fatter than good old sugar ever could!
Now, discover how this "healthy option" could actually kill you... plus learn more real medical truths that could save your life!
"I pray that this event ends global warming the same way that Live Aid ended
world hunger," he said in London.
- comedian Chris Rock
"While these results show that exposure to some contaminants may be less in some parts of the state compared to the 1980s, further reductions will likely depend on mercury emission controls and PCB remediation efforts," Schrank says.
SOURCE - Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
A recent report out of Europe indicates that tackling air pollution, contaminated drinking water and other environmental risks could save 13 million lives annually around the globe. Released by the World Health Organization, the report shows that Angola, Burkina Faso, Mali and Afghanistan to be among the countries most affected by environmental risk factors including noise pollution, hazardous working conditions, problematic agricultural methods, and climate change. Interestingly, in 23 of the 192 countries on which the report focused more than 10 percent of deaths can be traced to just two factors, unsafe drinking water and indoo...
Fate can take strange forms, and so perhaps it does not seem unusual that Captain Charles Moore found his life's purpose in a nightmare. Unfortunately, he was awake at the time, and 800 miles north of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean.
| HAROLD McGEE, NY TIMES, 2007 - Accompanied by six graphs, two tables and equations whose terms include "bologna" and "carpet," [a new study from Clemson University provides] a thorough microbiological study of the five-second rule: the idea that if you pick up a dropped piece of food before you can count to five, it's O.K. to eat it. . . Findings: --Women are more likely than men to eat food that's been on the floor. --Cookies and candy are much more likely to be picked up and eaten than cauliflower or broccoli. --And, if you drop your food on a floor that does contain microorganisms, the food can be contaminated in 5 seconds or less. Connecticut College seniors and cell and molecular biology majors Molly Goettsche and Nicole Moin took two food samples - apple slices and Skittles candies - to the Connecticut College dining hall and snack bar. They dropped the foods onto the floors in both locations for five, 10, 30 and 60 second intervals, and also tested them after allowing five minutes to elapse. They then looked for any rogue bacteria that might have attached to the foods. The researchers found no bacteria were present on the foods that had remained on the floor for five, 10 or 30 seconds. The apple slices did pick up bacteria after one minute, however, and the Skittles showed a bacterial presence after remaining on the floor for five minutes. The results prove, according Goettsche and Moin, that you can wait at least 30 seconds to pick up wet foods and more than a minute to pick up dry foods before they become contaminated with bacteria. |
Here's an ethical question: in a world where people starve, does it make sense to run cars on food? In 2005, ethanol plants consumed 14 percent of the nation's corn crop. Producing seven times as much fuel, under Bush's proposed mandate, would put the proportion close to 100 percent.
....it didn't take him long to decide that cellulosic ethanol was the Next Big Thing.
What is clear is that, despite its environmental and efficiency woes, corn ethanol has been the lucky beneficiary of an American political quirk, first pointed out by economist Bruce Yandle in a famous 1983 article in the journal Regulation. In the article, Yandle, now dean emeritus of the Clemson College of Business and Behavioral Sciences, recounted that, while he worked at the Federal Trade Commission, he noticed a funny thing about regulations that captured the public's imagination and managed to endure. These regulations evolved not because of rational cost-benefit analysis, Yandle wrote, but because of odd alliances between what he called "Bootleggers and Baptists."
Yandle suggested that most regulations could be viewed in this light. Groups with moral motives provide cover for those who benefit economically (groups that, unlike bootleggers, typically operate within the law), even if the two sides don't have much else in common. So far, this dynamic has propelled ethanol from obscurity to the center of American energy policy.
