Poor Graham: BP Disaster mucks up his politics {eKos Earthship Friday}

by eKos

Welcome to the eKos Earthship, your one-stop-shop for green diaries and series.

Tonight's editor: patrickz

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Is this the year the United States finally puts a price on carbon? While Senator Lindsey Graham (R-CRYBABY) pouts, Reid and the rest of the Democratic Caucus have decided to go big or go home on climate change.

Meanwhile, Asian carp threaten to destroy the ecology of the Great Lakes, sea cucumbers warn us about climate change in the deep, and scientists put the pieces together in understanding the end of the last ice age.

This and more in tonight's edition of the eKos Earthship.

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Beneath the fold you will find news and notes, community announcements, and our eco-diary roundup.

All views expressed by today's editor do not necessarily represent those of eKos or eKos listed diarists.

continued at Daily Kos....

May 2010 ... 393 ppm ... and CO2 is Accelerating

by jamess

We live in Epic Times.

For nearly the last Million years, CO2 levels in the Atmosphere, stayed mostly below 300 ppm (parts per million).

Well those happy days are apparently over.

Welcome to the New Normal!

CO2Now.org

Earth's CO2 Home Page

Atmospheric CO2 for May 2010

392.94 ppm

larger image

Preliminary data released June 7, 2010 (NOAA-ESRL MLO)

Well maybe 393 PPM of CO2 is not really that big of a deal?

CO2Now.org

What level is safe?

The upper safety limit for atmospheric CO2 is 350 parts per million (ppm). Atmospheric CO2 levels have stayed higher than 350 ppm since early 1988.

Well maybe that extra 43 ppm's is not really big enough to matter?  (... we can hope.)

continued at Daily Kos....

Washington Wilts While Arctic Melts

by A Siegel

Simply put, Washington, DC, weather is miserable at this time.  It feels like the middle of August, at the moment, with temperatures nearing 100 degree with very high humidity. Life for many: air conditioned house to air conditioned car to air conditioned office, with too much sweat in the seconds moving from one air-conditioned space to another.

Right now, with temperatures predicted in the high 90s for most of the  coming days, we're about to shatter the record for the hottest June on record (see Capital Climate).  In fact, the current June average temperature of 79.5 degrees is 5 degrees above the norm and 0.3 degrees higher than a typical July.

A frequently heard question heard from 10 year olds and 70 year olds alike: If June is like this, what will August be like?

continued at Daily Kos....

Weekly Mulch: As risks for oil and gas grow, USSF offers change

by The Media Consortium

By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
BP oil has been spilling into the Gulf of Mexico for more than two months, and while attention has focused there, deepwater oil drilling is just one of many risky methods of energy extraction that industry is pursuing. Gasland, Josh Fox’s documentary about the effects of hydrofracking, a new technique for extracting natural gas, was broadcast this week on HBO. In the film, Fox travels across the country visiting families whose water has turned toxic since gas companies began drilling in their area.


continued at Daily Kos....

Whales: "No future, except extinction" - biologist

by worldforallpeopleorg

The ocean is still pretty - if you steer your yaught clear of the oily sections and swirling eddies of millions of tons of plastic garbage. But it is not healthy.  

"I don't see any future for whale species except extinction. This not on anybody's radar, no government's radar anywhere, and I think it should be."

The canary in the coal mine has become the whale in the ocean. New information;

continued at Daily Kos....

Village Green: Thinking about the economics of sustainable communities

by Kaid at NRDC

Earlier this month, I spoke to the annual convention of the American Institute of Architects in Miami Beach, as part of a session on neighborhood density.  We had a sizable, knowledgeable and attentive audience, and I was struck by the fact that most of the comments and questions after our session were about what we need to do to craft sustainable urban economies, not the facts and figures we had presented regarding the market for walkable neighborhoods, how to design for environmental sustainability, and the dividends that urban densities can bring to their communities.

continued at Daily Kos....

Arctic Sea Ice Meltdown Accelerates: DK Greenroots

by FishOutofWater

Thin Arctic sea ice, is cracking up and melting down at record rates so far this year. A central core of ice north of Greenland is intact while most of ice is failing across the Arctic. The melting of Arctic sea ice has more profound ecological and climatological implications than the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Arctic sea ice concentration.

continued at Daily Kos....

Protein

by bigjacbigjacbigjac

This is actually another of my overpopulation alarm diaries.

But I feel a need to focus on a particular point, the question of what is the ideal human diet.

I got a diary on the rec list, but many thoughtful readers firmly disagreed with my statement on the topic of nutrition.

This is important, because if we are to make proposals of how many humans would be sustainable on the planet, we need to define, to some extent, what lifestyle we are proposing for the humans of the future.

Fewer humans, yes, but living in what housing, drinking water from what sources, and filtered and processed how, and what nutrition, what balance between protein, fats, and carbs, and what sources for vitamins and minerals, and what sources of protein, fats, and carbs?

On none of these questions should our answer be a shrug of the shoulders and a vague mumbling of whatever has been working, because that would be advocating business as usual, and that strategy has us heading straight for disaster, and quickly so.

We need to think about these things.

I certainly do not have all the answers, but I know we cannot get stuck in analysis paralysis.

I have some ideas, below the fold.

continued at Daily Kos....

BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership:  #31

by Liveblog

The current ROV DIARY: BP Oilpocalypse ROV #141.

Rules of the Road

• We take volunteers for subsequent diaries in the sub diaries or ROV's as we have playfully coined them.
• Please rec this mothership diary, not the ROVs.
• Please be kind to fellow kossacks who may have limited bandwidth and refrain from posting images or videos.

PLEASE visit Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier's diaries to find out how you can help the Gulf now and in the future. We don't have to be idle! And thanks to Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier for working on this!

To repeat: please refrain from commenting in this mothership diary, unless you're volunteering for a submersible shift.

continued at Daily Kos....