Too bad about the “your property is greater than .5 acre and is unobstructed” requirement. Because otherwise I would totally buy a windmill.

It doesn’t look like much, but what you’re looking at is the number of cell phones “retired” in the U.S. every day — 426,000. View a close up, and other similar photo montages of consumption at Chris Jordan’s Running the Numbers.

(via GOOD Magazine)

A graphics-rich daily exploration of superfund sites across the country.

(via Tawny Grammar)

If you don’t have time to pick up a copy of Jeff Goodell’s Big Coal, then you ought to at least take a read through his compact Washington Post article, King Coal: What It Costs Us.

Related: George Orwell writes about coal mining.

(via Gristmill)

Numbers can be stifling and boggling, but more amazing (and depressing) than the fact that 40% of deaths, worldwide, are related to pollution, is the statement that some 57% of the world population is malnourished. Which is shocking to me, but not. More shocking, however, is that in 1950, the percentage was 20.

(via EurekAlert: “Pollution causes 40 percent of deaths worldwide” [13 Aug 2007])

Elizabeth Royte, who wrote the charming eco-logue the Tapir’s Morning Bath, does a piece on New York City’s water supply. It’s interesting, both historically and also in the infrastructural how-it-works sort of gee-whiz way. (It also encourages me to move Royte’s book on garbage further up on my to-read list.)

(If the NYT can make a corny Elia Kazan reference, then I can make a tired Samuel Taylor Coleridge reference, is all I have to say for myself.)

Not exactly breaking news, but Burmese pythons are setting up shop in the Everglades, and–apparently–they quite like it.

Each year a significant number of Burmese pythons - like the snake on sale in a pet store here - are taken home by people who never quite understand the presale warning.

They are told point-blank that their 20-inch “baby” will probably grow into a 20-foot adult and live for 25 years. That’s a lot of mice, rats, rabbits, and chickens to feed an adult snake capable of quickly dispatching other beloved pets, children, or even adults.

Authorities in South Florida suspect that many frustrated or frightened Burmese python owners have been releasing their snakes into the nearby Everglades rather than trying to find a new home in captivity for them.

…

In 2005, 95 snakes were captured in the Everglades. So far this year, more than 154 have been picked up.

But Python Pete is on the job, along with plenty of good-natured humans. Despite this, the battle’s far from over, and the outlook isn’t particularly rosy:

“We have been remarkably unsuccessful in eradicating any firmly established alien species in Florida,” says Richard Bartlett, a reptile expert in Gainesville, Fla.

(Christian Science Monitor: “Gators Beware: Pythons Moving into Everglades,” by Warren Richey [Dec 19, 2006])

…on soil remediation!

Researchers have developed a prototype that cleans soil by making mud of it and blasting it with ultrasound:

Sound waves travel through water as a series of high pressure waves with low pressure areas in between. The low pressure causes the water to boil and form microscopic bubbles. The high pressure then forces the bubbles to collapse, generating a shockwave that produces localised temperature flashes of more than 4000°C and pressures of about 1000 atmospheres. That is more than enough to break down any complex molecules in the water, Sosa Pintos says.

Trials look to have been involving a “simplified” soil medium, so it’ll be interesting to see if the technique is as successful in the field.

(NewScientist: “Sound blaster cleans contaminated soil,” by Tom Simonite [Sept 6, 2006])

…the Utne Reader of environmental blogs, though the phrase the folks there use is “traveling blog carnival”.  This month’s “issue” is posted at Perceiving Wholes.

“Draw a 100-mile circle around almost any major world city — Rome, Paris, Tokyo — and there’s an extensive commuter rail network linking vibrant communities. We have antiquated commuter rail networks around Boston and New York. We’ve starved the infrastructure.”

…

Yet New England, a century ago, had a robust rail network, covering a huge percentage of its territory. Many of the rail lines — or at least their rights-of-way — still exist. But New England’s state transportation departments have made no push to coalesce, project needed passenger services, consult with the sometimes obdurate freight railroads, rebuild the missing Hudson River bridge, and employ carrots and sticks to get longer-distance freight onto trains.

(via New England Futures: “Road, Rail, Air, Water: Separate Worlds or One System?” by Neal Peirce & Curtis Johnson)

A Chicago Tribune correspondent embarks on a mission to trace the oil from a service station back to its sources; the results are quite remarkable–enlightening and frightening and such–and are conveyed through a written article and an online video documentary (which, before you go, “aw, shucks,” has pretty remarkable production values).

(Also, the documentary uses some well-placed Philip Glass music from Koyaanisqatsi, which is a plus.)

(via Grist)

I sure do, I know that much. The IHT has an interesting article (and accompanying slide-show, which you can catch in the upper right-hand corner of the article page) on a scientific expedition in Indonesia which uncovered newly discovered species in an isolated chunk of jungle. The phrase “lost world” gets tossed around, but, you know.

A snippet:

The December 2005 expedition to Papua Province on the western side of New Guinea island was organized by the U.S.-based environmental organization Conservation International and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.

“There was not a single trail, no sign of civilization, no sign of even local communities ever having been there,” said Beehler, adding that two headmen from the Kwerba and Papasena tribes, the customary landowners of the Foja Mountains, accompanied the expedition.

…

The scientists said they had discovered 20 frog species, including a tiny microhylid frog less than 14 millimeters, or a little more than a half-inch, long, four new butterfly species, and at least five new types of palms.

Their findings, however, will have to be published and then reviewed by peers before the new species are officially classified, a process that could take six months to several years.

…

One of the most remarkable discoveries was the Golden-mantled Tree Kangaroo, an arboreal jungle-dweller previously thought to have been hunted to near extinction, and a new honeyeater bird, which has a bright orange face-patch with a pendant wattle under each eye, Beehler said. The scientists also took the first known photographs of Berlepsch’s Six-Wired Bird of Paradise, described by hunters in New Guinea in the 19th century.

Hopefully they’ll get along okay.

(Don’t worry–they will; they live in different countries.)

In Colombia, a frog (the somewhat lackadaisically-named ‘painted frog’, Atelopus ebenoides marinkellei) is rediscovered, having last been seen in 1995.  And in England, a hawk, troubled in the past, is doing better: the marsh harrier.

In what seems to have been some sort of combination of performance art and environmental protest (maybe?), a group took a parking space in San Francisco, fed the parking meter, and transformed the space into a park of sorts.  Tranforming a private space (parking space) into a public one (park… space).
Witness:

One of the more surprising parts of the project is that the group had absolutely no interference from authority-type figures.

The project website includes photos and text and such, as well as a handy how-to guide, should you feel compelled to re-create the experiment.

…but they should, perhaps. Despite a whole host of Acronymic predictions via the UN (specifically, the UN’s IPPC) that sea level would not be affected by Antarctic ice, glaciologists are now singing a pretty different song.

(NewScientist: “Antarctic glaciers calving faster into the ocean,” by Fred Pearce [October 18, 2005])

“Hi, my name is Dr. Johnny Valdez, and I think global warming is bunk!”

“Oh, and did I mention the six-figure donation my organization got from a prominent, ahem, petroleum utilization corporation?”

Not too far from the truth, aside from the total lack of details. Here are some actual details, courtesy of Environmental Defense.

The internet has revolutionised shopping for books, DVDs and airline tickets, but it has also opened up great opportunities to deal in illegal wildlife which, according to the UN, is worth billions of pounds a year and now rivals the arms and drug trades in scale.
…
“Within one week we found over 9,000 wild animal products and specimens, and wild animals for sale, predominantly from species protected by law,” says the report for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw). “More than 100 traders were identified, each advertising an unnamed, unspecified number of items,” said the authors of the report.
The range of live endangered animals for sale could have set up whole zoos, and the parts of dead animals found on the web would have stocked streets of Chinese pharmacies. “They included some of the world’s most endangered species,” the report says. “There were live Amazonian parrots, wild cats, a green turtle which the seller claimed was captured from a south-east Asian rainforest; even a live pet lion.” A total of 146 live primates were found in a week, some being advertised before they were even born. Commercial trade in any primate species is either prohibited or subject to strict controls.

(Guardian: “Tigers and gorillas - for sale on the internet,” by John Vidal [Aug 16, 2005])

Now, a new study is offering insight into the long-term impacts of these changes, particularly the effects of large-scale deforestation in tropical regions on the global climate.

…

Specifically, deforestation of Amazonia was found to severely reduce rainfall in the Gulf of Mexico, Texas, and northern Mexico during the spring and summer seasons when water is crucial for agricultural productivity. Deforestation of Central Africa has a similar effect, causing a significant precipitation decrease in the lower U.S Midwest during the spring and summer and in the upper U.S. Midwest in winter and spring. Deforestation in Southeast Asia alters rainfall in China and the Balkan Peninsula most significantly.

Elimination of any of these tropical forests, Amazonia, Central Africa or Southeast Asia, considerably enhances rainfall in the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. However, the combined effect of deforestation in all three regions shifts the greatest precipitation decline in the U.S. to California during the winter season and further increases rainfall in the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

(EurekAlert: “Tropical deforestation affects rainfall in the US and around the globe” [Sept 13, 2005])

US city rankings by SustainLane.

In addition to having a logical color-coded system, SustainLane has a fairly comprehensive break-down of sustainability issues for each city, with individual rankings for everything from concrete things, like air quality and transportation, to less obvious things, like city innovation and knowledge base. The rankings include info for the top 25 cities (of which the bottom half aren’t so impressive, but still in theory rank above other cities).