2007 Bloggies: Best Topical Weblog [view: normal]

Trash collected by the North Atlantic expedition. Image credit: 5 Gyres We have all heard that there is a swirling mass of plastic trash in the Pacific Ocean. What many people still don't know, however, is that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not alone. In fact, there are five s...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Hate Speech Against Cyclists? Did ESPN's Tony Kornheiser forget to take his medication before a recent show? I don't know what happened, but he ended up spewing hate against Washington DC cyclists, telling his listeners and co-hosts that he could barely contain himself from "running them down" (sa...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image via AT&T AT&T has announced a new charger coming to market soon, one that solves the problem of excess power consumption during charging. As we know, phone chargers - and most charger - draw a small amount of power from the outlet even when the connected device is done charging. Concept devices and /www.treehugger.com/files/2010/03/att-launches-cell-phone-charger-with-zero-vampire-power-draw.php?campaign=th_rss">Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Image via Mary Huang A windmill. That you wear. Oh, that we were joking. But it's not April Fool's Day yet, and this thing is real. It's a harness that you wear, so you can harness the wind. Like a functional fairy suit. It's called the Dandelion, and it's quite the fashion statement. Check out a video of the outfit in action. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Constance Okolett at entrance to her kitchen in eastern Uganda Asinget village Osukuru sub county Tororo district. Image credit: Oxfam International/Flickr This post was written by Constance Okolett, a farmer from Tororo district in Eastern Uganda and a mother of seven. She is also a community activist and chairperson of the Osukura United Women Network. Climate change is happening. I know this b...

Image via Tendril Tendril, one of the main leaders in the home energy management industry, is finally releasing what most other home energy management companies have already released - a gadget for watching your energy consumption and shifting to better habits through access to real time usage and pricing information. But while home power monitors and dashboards abound, Tendril is hoping this one...

From the news that dozens of sick and hungry sea lion pups have washed up on California shores this winter to Ford's new purpose-built Police Interceptor car that is significantly more fuel-efficient than the venerable Ford Crown Vic, a lot happened this week in green. BMW and Siemens unveiled a system of networked traffic lights that save time and fuel, high speed trains are set to run from Beij...

photo: Keith Ellenbogen Even though the World Wildlife Fund recently warned that Atlantic bluefin tuna will be wiped out completely by 2012 if we don't halt the overfishing of it, we still can't seem to protect the species. By some accounts, eating the quickly diminishing tuna is now similar to feasting on a gorilla burger, but this didn't sway votes at the Convention on International Trad...Rea...

Image via Energy Star EcoAlign has just put out a new EcoPinion survey, this time about Energy Star. And the findings are not exactly surprising: most Americans want Energy Star to evolve because right now, the brand is losing meaning. While it's highly recognizable among consumers, Energy Star is in need of a make-over so that consumers can be sure they're getting products that not only meet a c...

Images by Joost van Brug In yet an other great example of combining functions to take up less space, Georg Bohle builds a piano into a dining table. For that matter, you can have music while you dine. "The pianotable offers a dinner with the accompaniment of a piano. The piano player takes a seat at the dining table."...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Sammy shares that aquarium with some 65,000 other fish. Photo: Lori Greig via flickr. Dubai's aquariums can't catch a break. First one in a mall cracks at the seams and now the one at the Atlantis The Palm hotel has come under fire for continuing to keep a four-year old female whale shark, dubbed Sammy....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: Friendly Aquaponics & Makine Mekanik While some folks may be busy debating whether soil-less agriculture can be organic or not, there's a lot of momentum behind aquaponics. As the name suggests, aquaponics is a system of food cultivation that combines hydroponics with fish farming, and which uses the waste from the fish to feed the plants, and the plants to filter the waste from the...

Image credit:Environmental Integrity Project report data, via McClatcy, Pat Carr Using publicly available data maintained by USEPA, an Environmental Integrity Project report lists Texas as having five of the 10 largest power plant mercury air pollution sources in the nation. The sum result: nearly 12 tons per year of mercury emitted into the Texas skies during 2008. It's not just Texans who are e...

One of the virtues of standing desks is that they can take up a lot less space. Here is a neat tower that gives you a place to store your notebook, but also has all kinds of storage and features including a printer drawer, sockets and plugs for projectors and accessories and even a sound system....Read the full story on TreeHugger

A symptom of changing climate, Worldwatch shows us that not only are winters in New England averaging three degrees warmer than they did 100 years ago, trees have a ten day longer growing season than they did 40 years ago. And that's not it. According to the New England Society of American Foresters because of the warming, spring is arriving earlier and rivers are flowing at peak levels sooner tha...

Images via Yanko Design A group of designers have decided that there's got to be a better way to find the freshest produce in a supermarket. Rather than trust your own senses, they think a fading barcode is the right solution. They've come up with a barcode that starts off as a usual barcode, then slowly fades along with the product's freshness. Not only would you be able to see which fruits and ...

Mohamed Nasheed speaking during COP15, photo: Matthew McDermott. I'm only going to feign momentary offense at Maldives' President Mohamed Nasheed, because I happen to think there's nothing wrong with hugging a tree every now and then... At a climate change seminar in Helsinki, Finland Nasheed said that apart from environmental concerns there are very good reasons that we have to collectively act ...

Image from Shanzai Cardboard is popping up everywhere. A strong and durable material, it is made from recycled paperboard and is itself recyclable when you get bored. It is long lasting, can be assembled easily, comes in a flat-pack and some say is softer and friendlier than wood or plastic. It certainly is cheaper.... Here are some new and novel ways that cardboard is being used in the furniture...

When an insect queen ventures onto the mating scene, she certainly makes the most of it, coupling with as many as 90 males each half-hour. That's because during the mating process for "social insects" like ants, bees, and termites, the highly prized queens mate for just o...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Vatican Gardens by Hello, I Am Bruce via Flickr For years, groups both for and against Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) have been lobbying for endorsement from the Vatican. Up until now the the Holy See has remained neutral on the subject although is has sponsored studies that seemed to have the goal of promoting the use of GMOs to cure world hunger. The Catholic News Service (CNS) is now re...

Photo via Seed Magazine Do climate scientists seem too angry? Mathew Nesbit, a professor of communications, has an interesting piece in Slate today arguing that they do, and that it's going to have a negative impact on the public's understanding of climate science. It's a pertinent topic, as a recent editorial in the esteemed scientific journal Nature has described the current situation climate s...

Photo: Michael Graham Richard Can BYD Deliver on EV Promises? For a while it looked like BYD would be a leader in electric cars and plug-in hybrids. They had aggressive release schedules, great battery technology (at least on paper), and being based in China, they had some cost advantages over most of their competitors. They even had backing by none other than Warren Buffett! But then we started ...

How do you draw the world's attention to a deadly global scourge? Call up your friends and climb a mountain (it could help if your friends are mega-celebrities and MTV wants to make a film about it.) This is how Kenna set out to illuminate the global clean water crisis. Calling it Summit on the Summit, the Grammy-nominated recording artist assembled /www.treehugger.com/files/2010/03/treehugger-radio-kenna-summit-on-the-summit.php?campaign=th_rss">Read the full story on TreeHugger
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All Cyclists and Bus Operators Should Know This Surprisingly, despite their very different sizes, bicycles and buses have many things in common. They both stick mostly to the right side of the road (in countries that drive on the right, that is) and move slower than most other vehicles. On top of that, buses are frequently making stops and moving in and out of traffic, making them particularly in...

Springwise, a "daily fix of entrepreneurial ideas" shows us Destination Dinners, which makes "cooking authentic dishes from around the world fun, easy and educational." For $25 or $30, you get "pre-measured hard to find spices, sauces and dried ingredients, preparation instructions, shopping list for fresh items and trivia about the destination." Plus a lot of plastic....Read the full story on Tr...