30,000 Rock: A Peek into New York City’s Geological Underpinnings

In a City Where Everyone’s Rushing, Few Ponder the Relentless, Plodding Progression of the Ground Beneath Their Feet

When I moved to Manhattan in August 2010, I already knew the city as a maze of crumbling, gum-stained sidewalks connected to what I considered the real word by ribbons of concrete and steel. Crossing one of the largest of those ribbons — the George Washington Bridge — one day, I found myself immediately lost. Highway entrance and exit ramps curled to and fro in an indeterminate tangle. Before too long, though, I'd regained my composure, and the rather serpentine course I'd taken through Harlem's grid of one-way streets led me more or less in the direction I wanted to go.

Photo courtesy Stig Nygaard/Wikimedia CommonsBelvedere Castle in Central Park stands atop an exposed part of the 380 million-year-old Manhattan schist.

Just as Harlem’s greasy pavement spat my battered car into Morningside Heights, I found myself face-to-face with a most curious sight  — a building perched atop a huge mass of boulders which looked to be embedded in the side of a small hill. Having seen rocks strewn about Central Park on earlier visits to …more

by Benjamin Preston – February 3, 2012

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Wolf Advocates’ Rage Against The Grey Might Be Misdirected

Hollywood Film Isn’t Part of the Assault Against Real Wolves

In early January movie trailers for writer-director Joe Carnahan’s new film, The Grey, started to run in advance of its January 27 national release: Somewhere in the northern Alaskan wilderness, a shuttle plane full of oil field works crashes on frozen tundra during a blizzard. Only a handful survive, wounded, freezing, stunned at their fate. And then the howling starts, weird, loud, frightening howling. Giant wolves materialize. Bloody wolf tracks mark all that remain of one worker — the monsters have dragged him off!  Hero John Ottway, played by Liam Neeson, tapes a knife to one hand, and broken, miniature liquor bottles to the other, then charges into battle.

Promotional Poster/Open Road FilmsWhen wolf conservationists denounced the film in mid-January and
advocated a boycott, no one had actually seen the movie, only
the trailers.

News of The Grey's imminent release came as yet another depressing blow to wolf advocates in the Northern Rockies, who are now entering their fourth year of brutal political conflict trying to save the region’s remaining wolves. This wolf war began in 2009, …more

by James William Gibson – January 31, 2012

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Some Biofuels Are As Dirty As Tar Sands Oil, Shows Leaked EU Data

The Difficult Task of Distinguishing Good and Bad Biofuels Remains Essential

by Damien Carrington

Photo by Achmad Rabin TaimA palm oil plantation in Bogor, Indonesia. Palm oil biodiesel also received another blow on Friday, with the US
Environmental Protection Agency suggesting it fails to meet the US requirement of emitting at least 20 percent
less carbon than diesel from crude oil.

There are good biofuels and bad biofuels: the trick is telling one from the other. That's particularly difficult when trying to take account of the natural forests and wetlands that can destroyed in the drive to grow some biofuel crops. But we're getting closer, it seems, and palm oil and soy beans now appear utterly unsupportable as a source of biodiesel.

The new data comes from a leak obtained by EurActiv from the European Commission. The EC is considering what level of carbon emissions each type of biofuel causes once burned, after everything - including "indirect land-use change" - is taken into account.

It is obvious that for a biofuel to be useful in cutting the emissions driving global warming it needs to have a …more

by The Guardian UK – January 27, 2012

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Feed 9 Billion People, Cut Out the Food Waste

Improving Food System Efficiency Shouldn’t be Hard

I’ve been hearing this “9 billion” figure a lot lately. Nine billion people on the planet by 2050. It’s a big number, and most of the extensive coverage in papers, magazines, and blogs jump straight to the issue of food: how are we going to feed all 9 billion?

Photo by Gabriel AmadeusOne testament to the increased awareness of food waste is the new wave of
popularity for dumpster-diving. But this kind of scavenging isn't always easy.

Most articles jump straight to scientific and political solutions. The Economist touted the latest agronomic practices: matching the “best plants, fertilisers, fungicides, and husbandry” to get higher crop yields. American Public Media’s new project, Food for 9 Billion, discusses subsidized birth control in poor areas, soothing the political tensions that lead to famine in Africa, and, again, agriculture science. Even our good friends over at Monsanto have a page devoted to the topic of 9 billion mouths to feed, emphasizing — can you guess? — advanced breeding and biotechnology.

But looking for high-tech scientific solutions to the …more

by Brian Scoles – January 26, 2012

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Obama Administration to Appeal WTO Decision Against Dolphins

Mexico Is Seeking to Overturn the Dolphin Safe Label on Tuna

The Obama administration announced last week that it is in the process of appealing a 2011 decision by the World Trade Organization (WTO) that seeks to weaken the US Dolphin Safe tuna standards. The move has been applauded by Earth Island Institute’s International Marine Mammal Project (IMMP), which established the international Dolphin Safe Tuna labeling program in 1990 and monitors tuna companies around the world for compliance.

Photo by Steve JurvetsonThe Mexican government uses a much weaker standard for calling canned tuna “Dolphin Safe.”

More than 7 million dolphins have been drowned by tuna boats since the practice of chasing and netting dolphins to catch tuna that swim with them was developed in the late 1950’s. There are other ways for fishermen to catch tuna without chasing or harming dolphins. Under US standards, canned tuna cannot be labeled as Dolphin Safe if dolphins were chased by boats, surrounded by nets, killed or seriously injured during the catching of tuna. Dolphin deaths have dropped by 98 percent since the implementation of the IMMP Dolphin Safe …more

by Mark J. Palmer – January 25, 2012

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State of the Union Speech Poses Major Challenge to Fracking Opponents

Natural Gas Looks to Have Bi-Partisan Establishment Support

President Obama’s State of the Union address was a mixed bag for environmentalists.

Official White House photo by Pete SouzaPresident Barack Obama talks with Jon Favreau, director of speechwriting, in the Oval Office a
day before his January 24 State of the Union address.

There were some expected disappointments, most obviously the president’s failure to mention climate change (perhaps the greatest threat facing humanity) except in passing. There were also some pleasant surprises, like the president’s defense of the EPA’s move to update mercury pollution rules, his commitment to use public lands and military installations to boost renewable energy production, his support for increasing energy efficiency as way of saving the economy money, and his call to slash fossil fuel subsidies and instead “double down” on clean energy tax credits.

The president’s commitment to put clean energy at the center of his broader platform to create “an economy built to last” is obviously welcomed. He seems serious about this, and, as his first campaign ad illustrated, the Obama 2012 team thinks this is a political winner.

But I’m …more

by Jason Mark – January 24, 2012

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Long Beach Wetlands Survive a Proposed $320 Million Development Project

Developers’ Classic Jobs vs. Environment Argument Fails to Convince City Council

Just days before the Christmas holiday, wetland-loving folks in Long Beach, California received an early gift: their hard work had fended off a proposed $320 million development that would have harmed the increasingly vibrant Los Cerritos Wetlands.

Photo courtesy Save Los Cerritos WetlandsLocal residents, environmentalists oppose plans to build a boutique hotel and shopping plaza on the Los Cerritos
Wetlands, which is home to more than 120 bird species and is a nesting spot for the endangered Belding's
Savannah Sparrow.

Both sides of hotly contested plans to build a boutique hotel and upscale shopping plaza along prime Long Beach waterfront, and adjacent to an already embattled wetlands, piled into Long Beach City Hall on December 20 to lay out their positions for and against the ambitious multi-million blueprints.

Quaintly dubbed Second+PCH by high-paid PR mavens (a reference to the corner of the proposed site, 2nd Street and Pacific Coast Highway), the arguments that night were familiar to political veterans.

It was jobs vs. the environment once again, a classic narrative that has echoed throughout the area’s …more

by Joshua Frank – January 24, 2012

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