Author: Organikos

Diesel’s Downsides

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Exhaust from a diesel engine is tested for nitrogen oxides. Photograph: Patrick Pleul/EPA

Thanks to the Guardian’s Environment section:

Europe’s problem with diesel cars

By 

New UK government tests confirm that diesel cars produce a lot more air pollution in real-world driving when compared with the legal tests. Those sold since 2009 emitted six times more nitrogen oxides, on average.

Compared with the stricter standards applied to petrol cars, the average diesel sold between 2009 and 2015 emitted 19 times more nitrogen oxides.

In 2014, more than half of new cars in Europe were diesel, so solving our air pollution problems will not be easy. The Airuse project highlighted the role of taxation in car buying choice. All European countries, except the UK, have lower tax on diesel fuel compared with petrol. Continue reading →

If You Happen To Be In San Sebastian

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Construcción Vacía, San Sebastián, Spain by Jorge Oteiza

Phaidon, the great book company, shares this news from one of our favorite places in Spain:

Given its political backdrop, the quest for artistic freedom in Spain has perhaps been necessarily more tumultuous than elsewhere. Jorge Oteiza and Eduardo Chillida’s Grupo Gaur took the fight to the dictatorship in 1966, casting off the vestiges of costumbrismo (folkloric realism) at the same time. For this reason, sculpture retains an elevated status in the country not least in the seaside town of San Sebastián, near Bilbao. The resort is an art nouveau gem, with stately belle époque facades and a nose for a party. Continue reading →

Dirty Things Dominate

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The Carthaginian general Hannibal is remembered for his march across the Alps with thirty-seven elephants, but scholars have long disputed exactly which route he took over the mountains. ILLUSTRATION COURTESY UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE / UIG / GETTY

Nature appreciation in these pages frequently has to do with dirty things that are simply fascinating. Related topics we care about such as conservation, as often as not have to do with dirty things; as in, things that need to be cleaned up. Here is another slightly odd appreciation of dirty things that fits the dirty but fascinating and useful category:

Searching for Signs of Hannibal’s Route in DNA from Horse Manure

BY MARGUERITE HOLLOWAY

More than two thousand years ago, thirty-seven elephants from heat-shimmering latitudes ascended Europe’s highest mountain range, tramped though snow and across ice, and breathed the thin air of high altitudes. Those that survived the perilous journey met with a bitter winter and war, as the Carthaginian general Hannibal, who had urged them through the Alps, battled the emergent Roman Republic. Continue reading →

Waddler Utility

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Indian runner ducks have been used in Asia for thousands of years to control pests. Now they’re used in a South African vineyard to eat snails that damage the vines. Sarah Birnbaum for NPR

We are pleased to know that birds from India have such enormous value in places outside India:

For This Vineyard, It’s Duck, Duck, Booze

On Vergenoegd Wine Estate in Stellenbosch, South Africa, about a thousand Indian runner ducks parade twice a day into a vineyard to rid it of pests. It’s a remarkably orderly scene.

Unlike your typical waddling duck, these ducks don’t sway back and forth. They run quickly in a straight line.

Every morning at 9:45 a.m., they emerge from a gate and zip around the gleaming white manor house – even sticking to a manicured gravel path. They run in formation. Their beaks all point in the same direction, their bodies all turn at the same time — like they’ve worked on the choreography beforehand.

The previous owner of the wine estate, John Faure, is a bird lover and brought them over from Asia. They have been at the estate for at least 30 years. Continue reading →

Octopus Painted with Its Own Ancient Ink

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Image of the completed octopus ink drawing. Photo by Esther van Hulsen, via ThisIsColossal

Octopuses are impressive animals, given their incredible intelligence, impressive sight, and, of course, number of limbs. Now, we’re learning that the pigment in their ink, which has been known to preserve well when fossilized, can still be used today for illustrative purposes. In fact, an English paleontologist did it in the 19th century, and more recently by Esther van Hulsen! More from Kate Sierzputowski at This Is Colossal:

Dutch wildlife artist Esther van Hulsen was recently given an assignment unlike her typical drawings of birds and mammals from life—a chance to draw a prehistoric octopus 95 million years after its death. Paleontologist Jørn Hurum supplied Hulsen with ink extracted from a fossil found in Lebanon in 2009, received as a gift from the PalVenn Museum in 2014.

Continue reading →

Scientists Speak On Behalf Of Yellowstone Grizzly Bears

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Thank you, EcoWatch, for keeping us posted on Jane Goodall’s never-ending advocacy on behalf of various members of the animal kingdom we co-inhabit the earth with:

Dr. Jane Goodall is one of 58 prominent scientists and experts who have signed a letter asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to retain Endangered Species Act protections for Yellowstone-area grizzly bears. Continue reading →

McKibben In The Guardian

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Global direct action began with hundreds of environmental activists invading the UK’s largest opencast coal mine in south Wales on Tuesday. Photograph: Kristian Buus for the Guardian

More McKibben, who we believe we will never tire of sharing here:

The time has come to turn up the heat on those who are wrecking planet Earth

An interesting question is, what are you waiting for?

Global warming is the biggest problem we’ve ever faced as a civilisation — certainly you want to act to slow it down, but perhaps you’ve been waiting for just the right moment. Continue reading →

Food Footprints

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Leonard Scinto, a researcher at Florida International University, standing beside a concrete post that measures the subsidence of soil in the Everglades Agricultural Area. In 1924, the top of the post was level with the ground surface. Dan Charles/NPR

Five minutes to listen to how your food greens, or does not green, our planet (thanks to National Public Radio, USA):

The Environmental Cost Of Growing Food

Let’s say you’re an environmentally motivated eater. You want your diet to do as little damage as possible to our planet’s forests and grasslands and wildlife.

But how do you decide which food is greener? Continue reading →

Exploration in Yellowstone Lake

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Yellowstone Lake at dawn by Wikimedia contributor Seglea

We like national parks, and are surprised to learn that the body of water pictured above hasn’t actually been explored much. The good news is that there are efforts underway to send an underwater drone down into the lake’s depths to better study this interesting site of thermal activity. Jeffrey Marlow reports for Discover Magazine’s blog:

2016 marks the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, a milestone that has set off a year of celebration for what historian Wallace Stegner called “the best idea we ever had.” The first park, Yellowstone, predates the Service itself, and despite its 4.1 million yearly visitors that are putting real stress on a highly interconnected ecosystem, certain portions of the park remain a nearly unadulterated wilderness.

One of these sites is the floor of Yellowstone Lake, a 350 square-kilometer body of water that reaches depths of 120 meters. And while much of Yellowstone’s thermal activity manifests on the surface – think rainbow-colored hot springs, gooey mudpots that smell of sulfur, and spurting geysers – the same forces create heated water and unique oases of microbial life at the lake bottom.

Continue reading →

Go, Phil, Go

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A worker near the Pebble Mine, in Alaska ’s Bristol Bay region, which is at the center of a long-running legal battle between a Canadian developer, native tribes, commercial fishermen, and environmentalists. PHOTOGRAPH BY AL GRILLO / AP

Thanks to Tim Sohn for bringing Phil North to our attention:

The E.P.A. Ecologist Who Became a Wanted Man

BY

When Phil North retired from the Environmental Protection Agency, after a mostly quiet twenty-three-year career in Alaska, his plan was to embark on an around-the-world sailing trip with his wife and two young children. But when it came time to weigh anchor, there was a problem: the aging boat that North had docked in South Carolina proved unsalvageable. A hunt for another suitable vessel in his price range yielded nothing. After a series of discussions and a vote, the family decided, in early 2014, to fly to New Zealand. “We were only going to go for three months, but we loved it and ended up buying a camper van and driving around for ten months,” North, who is fifty-nine, told me recently. “And then our visa ran out, and we thought, We’re so close to Australia, we can’t not go.” So they went, and toured the country for another year. Continue reading →

Another Call to Action from McKibben

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Photo of Bill McKibben by Corey Hendrickson/Polaris via The Guardian

We’ve been sharing pieces about or by Bill McKibben for many years now, like this interview from 2012, the news that he was stepping down from leading 350.org, a piece he wrote for the Guardian last year, and the story of his direct activism in New York a couple months ago. He’s now published an article, once again in the Guardian, about the need to take action around the world against fossil fuel companies. “The time has come to turn up the heat on those who are wrecking planet Earth,” McKibben writes, the question being, what are we all waiting for?

Global warming is the biggest problem we’ve ever faced as a civilisation — certainly you want to act to slow it down, but perhaps you’ve been waiting for just the right moment.

The moment when, oh, marine biologists across the Pacific begin weeping in their scuba masks as they dive on reefs bleached of life in a matter of days. The moment when drought in India gets deep enough that there are armed guards on dams to prevent the theft of water. The moment when we record the hottest month ever measured on the planet, and then smash that record the next month,and then smash that record the next month? The moment when scientists reassessing the stability of the Antarctic ice sheet have what one calls an ‘OMG moment’ and start talking about massive sea level rise in the next 30 years?

Continue reading →

Coffee Better Understood

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A competitor prepares coffee during the El Salvador National Barista Championship at a mall in San Salvador

STR New / Reuters

From the Atlantic, where some of (but not all) our favorite coffee stories have come from in the past, we have this new item to share:

Specialty Coffee’s Resident Scientist

A computational chemist is changing the way coffee makers think about water.

by Sarah Kollmorgen

Wherever he goes, Christopher H. Hendon brings a homemade supply of powdery white chemicals. Made from coral-reef care sets, the little bottles and plastic bags may raise some TSA eyebrows, but they serve a perfectly innocent purpose. The substances comprise his personal water filtration titration kit.

“Who travels with this much white powder?” Hendon says with a laugh. His duffel currently contains several compounds including calcium chloride, magnesium sulfate, and potassium bicarbonate. These mixtures help detect the invisible chemicals present in a glass of water, he explains. Using them, Hendon can determine how hard the water is in any geographical area, based on the minerals it contains. Continue reading →

Rainforest Alliance and Sustainable Agriculture Network

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Among the farms that the Rainforest Alliance certifies are those that produce bananas, coffee, tea, pineapples, cocoa, flowers and palm oil. Photo by Flickr user Sally Crossthwaite

The Rainforest Alliance and Sustainable Agriculture Network have been doing good work, mostly in developing countries, for over twenty years to improve agricultural practices and protect natural forests. The two groups published an Impacts Report not long ago that reviews their progress, and two executives wrote an article summarizing those impacts on GreenBiz.com:

Independent, third-party certification has grown phenomenally since 1993, when the Rainforest Alliance certified the first banana plantation to meet Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN) standards.

The standards prohibit conversion of forests or other natural ecosystems to cropland, protect workers and wildlife, regulate the use of chemicals and other farming practices. Today they cover more than a million farmers on Rainforest Alliance Certified farms, most of them smallholders, cultivating 100 crops on a total of 7.4 million acres (about the size of Switzerland) across 42 countries.

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Kenya Burns Over 100 Tons of Illegal Ivory

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Kenya will burn about 105 tonnes of elephant ivory and 1.5 tonnes of rhino horn in 11 large pyres, about seven times the amount previously burned in a single event. Photograph: Ben Curtis/AP via The Guardian

We featured poaching a few weeks ago here, in the case of primates, and we have discussed the illegal ivory trade and other endangered wildlife on the black market before. This weekend, Fiona Harvey reports for the Guardian, Kenya burned a massive amount of tusks from poached elephants, in a symbolic act of destruction that presumably cost the black market millions of dollars, and thousands of elephants their lives:

Tusks from more than 6,000 illegally killed elephants will be burned in Kenya on Saturday, the biggest ever destruction of an ivory stockpile and the most striking symbol yet of the plight of one of nature’s last great beasts.

The ceremonial burning in Nairobi national park at noon will be attended by Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, heads of state including Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, high-ranking United Nations and US officials, and charities. A wide network of conservation groups around the world have sent messages applauding the work.

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Must-Read Editorial

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Thanks to the New York Times for carrying this in prominent placement:

A Mine vs. a Million Monarchs

By DAN FAGIN

THE national tourism agency calls the Mexican mountain town of Angangueo a “Pueblo Mágico.” If so, it is a dark magic.

In recent years, Angangueo’s 5,000 inhabitants have been cursed by calamities natural and manufactured. Snowstorms, mudslides and flash floods have terrorized the town. Hulking piles of mine tailings line the main road, barren reminders of the silver, gold and copper mining that petered out a quarter-century ago after defining the community for 200 years.

Even the monarch butterflies that are the focus of the “magic town” tourism campaign are suffering. Millions still roost on nearby mountains, a wintertime spectacle that attracts the visitors from “El Norte” who are the town’s economic lifeline. But the overwintering population of monarchs has fallen by almost two-thirds over the past dozen years, and this year’s better-than-usual aggregation was abruptly devastated in March by another freak snowstorm, the worst in years. Continue reading →

Photos Worth Viewing

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A young man from Bali, Indonesia, shows off his rainbow-colored rooster before a cockfight. Courtesy of Ruben Salgado Escudero and the World Photography Organization

Thanks to National Public Radio (USA) for reminding us that it is that time of the year, again, when Sony culls through hundreds of thousands of entries to narrow the field down to a handful of exceptional photos:

6 Sensational Photos From A Global Contest With 230,000 Entries

One photo of a pensive Congolese woman in her distinctive makeup could be mistaken for a Renaissance painting. Another, of a coal plant sending smoke plumes over a town in China, looks like a still from a 1950s propaganda film. And another, of a little girl yawning during an Indonesian festival, will just make you smile. Continue reading →

Library Charisma

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An old sheep barn and loafing sheds will one day house books. Allison Amend

It has not been long since our last linkage out to a “library love” story. But this one is combined with a travel/journey and a conservation ethos–themes we enjoy seeing addressed together. Worth a read, thanks to the Travel section of the New York Times:

I am perched on a slippery roof ridge at the Buffalo Peaks Ranch in the rain, feet sliding on ancient asphalt shingles atop rotting plywood decking, tethered only by a rope. For fun.

With me on the roof are five other volunteers who are donating their time and brawn to create a live-in rural library in Colorado, helping the booksellers Jeff Lee and Ann Martin realize their dream.

In the course of their 20 years at the independent Denver bookstore Tattered Cover, Mr. Lee and Ms. Martin have accumulated more than 32,000 volumes on the American West (my first novel, “Stations West,” is among them). Seeking to share the books, and their love of Colorado, the pair, who are married, have leased the Buffalo Peaks Ranch, about two hours from Denver, to house their collection. Continue reading →

Purity Is Never Out Of Date

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A waiter carries beers at the Theresienwiese fair grounds of the Oktoberfest beer festival in Munich, southern Germany, last September. For centuries, a German law has stipulated that beer can only be made from four ingredients. But as Germany embraces craft beer, some believe the law impedes good brewing. Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AFP/Getty Images

Laws can come and go, as far as we are concerned (and we get the point here), but purity remains forever of value (thanks to National Public Radio, USA):

Germany’s Beer Purity Law Is 500 Years Old. Is It Past Its Sell-By Date?

With more than 1,300 breweries producing some five-and-a-half thousand different types of beer, Germany is serious about the amber nectar. There’s even a word for it –bierernst – which means “deadly serious” and translates literally as “beer serious.”

This sober attitude applies particularly to the German beer purity law known as the Reinheitsgebot. Introduced in 1516 by Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria, the decree allows for only hops, barley, water and, later, yeast in every Stein. For 500 years, this recipe has served Bavaria very well, and for the last century, the rest of Germany. Continue reading →

Macroentomotography

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Composite image by Levon Biss via ThisIsColossal

About five years ago we featured a piece that coined the term “entomotography,” and we’ve been sharing stories about insects frequently since then; one was even closely related to this post and could have shared the title, of bees photographed close-up. The specimens shown below, however, are not single photos but actually composite images of thousands of shots in the best lighting for each angle, stitched together to create amazing results. Kate Sierzputowski writes for ThisIsColossal:

Commercial photographer Levon Biss typically shoots portraits of world-class athletes—sports players caught in motion. His new series however, catches subjects that have already been paused, insect specimens found at the Oxford Museum of Natural History. The series originally started as a side-project capturing the detail of bugs that his son would catch at home, and is now displayed at the museum in an exhibition titled Microsculpture.

Composite image by Levon Biss via ThisIsColossal

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Speedier Retrofitting of City Buildings

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Image by Shutterstock.com via Conservationmagazine.org

Lots of energy is wasted by buildings that don’t have appropriate insulation or efficient HVAC systems. We’ve shared stories on lower-impact construction, like this recent piece on passive homes, and Conservation Magazine now has an article on a new way to decide on the city scale what buildings to retrofit – replace old types of windows, switch out light bulbs, etc. – based on research in Massachusetts. Prachi Patel reports:

In 2015, buildings of all types accounted for 40 percent of all energy consumption in the U.S. and 20 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions. Retrofitting old, energy-inefficient structures with efficiency features will be key for reducing their large carbon footprint. Many cities and states offer substantial incentives to home and commercial building owners who make such upgrades.

But instead of offering incentives willy-nilly, cities could use a smarter way to get the biggest energy impact, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology say. Some buildings are bigger energy-hogs than others. MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering Marta González and her colleagues have come up with a streamlined way to identify the culprits with the biggest room for improvements. Their simple model, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, could help city planners identify buildings where retrofits will have the biggest effect on a city’s overall greenhouse gas emissions.

Continue reading →