Into The Abyss: US State Environmental Agencies Outsourcing & Cutting Back Staff
October 20, 2010 No Comment
NY DEP logo excerpt. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie pushed successfully to “outsource” one of the major functions of the State Department of Environmental Protection: cleaning up contaminated industrial sites. This will no doubt save money for NJ taxpayers but it could also end up cutting some slack for Potentially Responsible Parties (PRPs). Could be a win win depending on your point of view. He also seems to want to outsource land use permitting . (I didn’t know that they could do that from Bangalore or Bejing?) New York State exemplifies this trend, as well. From th… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Screenshot from YouTube If all goes according to plan, this week Gabriel Nderitu will join the ranks of aviation history by becoming the first Kenyan to achieve flight with a homemade airplane. The 42-year-old, like the Wright brothers before him, isn’t a professional engineer or a pilot — in fact, he works in IT. But after months of studying airplane design and almost a year of tinkering on his humble plane, Gabriel n… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Image credit: brian.gratwicke / Creative Commons Scientists call it the “Olympic Village Effect”: A phenomena in which the fittest of a species breed with one another to create generations of physically exceptional individuals. This mechanism may be the cause of the incredible spread of cane toads in Australia —a revelation that proves they may be nearly impossible to stop but… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Photo: Creative Commons, Karen Ballard , Wikipedia Former Vice President Dick Cheney may have been more responsible for the near-decade of climate inaction that the Bush administration oversaw than anyone else. It was he who hewed closest to the climate denial script a decade ago, and perfected the art of insistently calling into question peer-reviewed, consensus-backed science as an ironclad excuse for inaction. In an op-ed, the New York Times links Cheney’s denial strategies to… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …Today on Planet 100: Are You Falling for These Common Climate Change Myths? (Video)
October 19, 2010 No Comment
Read more from the original source: Today on Planet 100: Are You Falling for These Common Climate Change Myths? (Video)
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Image: Youtube capture from Automotive X-Prize video A few months ago, I wrote about the RaceAbout electric car and the team of students that made it to compete in the Automotive X-Prize (follow the link for more details about the competition and the winners). But while there were many photos and tech specs, what was missing was a good video. That problem has been solved by the X-Prize foundation which released a short video about the RaceAbout. It has interviews an… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …New Study Says Young People Want Apartments, Not Houses; iPhones, Not Cars
October 19, 2010 No Comment
It is a theme on TreeHugger that living walkable communities and dense cities use less energy per capita, and that the auto-centric suburb is perhaps the worst of all planning models if we want to reduce our energy and particularly our oil consumption. But do people really want to live in high density apartments if they have the choice? A new Canadian study indicates that for a number of reasons, more and more people do. The study by GWL Realty Advisors comes to some interesting conclusions about how trends are changing regarding home ownership vs r… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Photo: Michael Graham Richard But People Always Say That… Ask people if they want to pay more for something – especially something they are not entirely familiar with – and chances are that the default answer will be “no”. That’s quite expected. So when Nielsen asked citizens of the U.S. and of the U.K. if they would consider buying an electric car (yes!) and how much extra they were ready to pay (nothing!), the results weren’t very surprising…. Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …The Range of the 2011 Brammo Enertia Electric Motorcycle Has Been DOUBLED!
October 19, 2010 No Comment
Photo: Brammo Electric Commuting Has Never Been This Fun The Enertia electric motorcycle by Brammo is getting a substantial upgrade for 2011. The company is announcing today a new model called the Brammo Enertia+, and while it will cost $1000 more (from $7,995 to $8,995) than the non-plus version, it will have double the range, going from 40 miles to 80 miles. The most impressive thing about it is that they accomplished this without increasing the bike’s weight. Who said battery technology isn’t progressing? Check out the video be… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …Drought Could Overtake Much of World by 2030, Rise to Unprecedented Levels by 2100
October 19, 2010 No Comment
photo: Bert K. / Creative Commons Plenty of studies have shown that climate change is going to affect precipitation and water supplies, but a new one from the National Center for Atmospheric Research starkly lays out how droughts, some so extreme that they are nearly without precedent, may spread throughout many of the world’s most densely populated places by the end of the 21st centur… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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