Susty

How to Save Tropical Rainforests

Research reveals that logging is the largest single factor leading to tropical deforestation, as the cutting and road building associated with the timber industry opens avenues into rainforests. This initiates a chain of destruction that can include more logging, mining, slash-and-burn clearing for cattle grazing and conversion for chemical-intensive industrial agriculture. Most of the resultant products are exported to northern industrialized countries.

That Toledo creativity and spirit was on display last night in Washington D.C. as fashion Designer Isabel Toledo showed her spring collection against a painted world in the signature style of her illustrator/artist husband Ruden Toledo’s hand. Politico has a video interview with the Toledos with hints about a new dress for Michelle Obama who wore a Toledo design at the presidential inaugural as well as words of inspiration about where Isabel gets inspiration…

The “Green Patriarch” Bartholomew of the Eastern Orthodox church officially opened the Eighth Religion, Science and the Environment (RSE) Symposium, entitled “Restoring Balance: The Great Mississippi River,” taking place for the next five days including a large and diverse group of theologians, scientists, policymakers, environmentalists, representatives of business and NGOs, and media. See video of the Ecumenical Patriarch’s opening address below the fold.

Maher calls out climate skeptics including Senator James Inhofe.

Super drought now causing dust storms in Australia.

Massachusetts officials are using high-tech tags to track the movements of two great white sharks near Cape Cod – the first time the fearsome fish have ever been tagged in the Atlantic Ocean.

STEWART: So you believe no public option, so even though that’s good enough for the military, not good enough for the people of America.

KRISTOL: Well, the military has a different health system than the rest of Americans.

File under unfortunate metaphors for creating a big tent. But this is the most inclusive way we’ve seen guys get involved with vagina’s in a long time…

The global water crisis trickles its way into the mainstream with University of Arizona professor Robert Glennon’s interview with John Stewart on the Daily Show. The occasion is the release of Glennon’s book Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What To Do About It. While Stewart sees the realities of our water sitch as a bit of a revelation, Glennon points out what many have known for a while: all of the water used in our homes is potable, but only ten percent is used for drinking and cooking. Just take a guess where the rest of it goes…

Google’s new data center in Belgium has no chillers to support its cooling systems. The site Data Center Knowledge explains that the chillers used to refrigerate water to cool data centers require, unsurprisingly, a large amount of electricity to operate. The quest for cost-effective energy via efficiency has led to a practice known as “free cooling:” air from outside the data center is used when the temperature is cool, while falling back on chillers on warmer days. Google takes this strategy to the next level eliminating chillers altogether in its data center near Saint-Ghislain, Belgium. Bonus feature is an on-site water purification facility that allows it to use water from a nearby industrial canal rather than a municipal water utility. Google anticipates free cooling at the facility for about seven days per year, but what’s really fascinating is what happens when the weather gets hot.

In an interview with The Tyee, on which the 100-Mile Diet was launched in British Columbia, Michael Pollan on his son’s eating journey going from finicky eater to foodie (presumably he’d also the eater of Fruity Pebbles). He touches on the dust-up between Michelle Obama with her organic garden on the White House lawn andthe Mid America CropLife Association encouraging her use of pesticides. Pollan suggests this lobbying group for pesticide manufacturers should go by the opposite name the “Bug Death Association.” Apparently the garden has a twin on the grounds of the Department of Agriculture…

The Isabel Toledo dress worn by Michelle Obama on Inauguration Day went on display yesterday at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology as part of a retrospective of designs by the Cuban-born designer.

350.org continues on the journey it launched in 2008 with author and activist Bill McKibben to spread its important message about reducing the world’s level of C02 in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million. Again the 350 campaign is using their customary panache to promote this year’s Global Day of Climate Action with another nifty animation like this one.

For World Ocean Day today, our production company Big City Pictures put together the first in a series of videos interviewing the grandson of Jacques Cousteau, Fabien Cousteau which I had the pleasure of editing. The occasion was a recent screening of the film Sea Ghosts which uses the Beluga whales as the “canary in the coal mine” to conveying the environmental consequences that await we humans. Ironically Sea Ghosts was on the same night that the Star Trek movie rebooted its space opera franchise, so we asked Fabien to comment on the disproportionate amount of research dollars being apportioned to space exploration over Earth’s oceans. He also touches on some basic concepts for how our everyday actions wind up contributing to the pollution of our oceans and how that comes back to haunt us on our dinner plates.

Bonk author Mary Roach delves into obscure scientific research, some of it centuries old, to make 10 surprising claims about sexual climax, ranging from the bizarre to the hilarious.