Photo via the New Republic It's a widely held notion that politicians have long been in the pocket of Big Oil. And there's good reason for that perception: oil companies' huge campaign donations, vast lobbying power, and close ties to politicians have ensured that their taxes remain low , that hidden subsidies are around to provide extra funding, and that they receive preferential treatment in US energy policy. But there could be a new, ... View original post here: The Next Big Oil: Big Smart Grid?
So there really isn't anything that deep to this image. It's just a (more or less) life-sized blue whale eye. And on the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society site you can educate yourself/be mesmerized/ waste some time for a while staring at it while the entire life-sized animal scrolls across your browser window. Believe me, it's way cooler than you might think:... Read more from the original source: Ever See a Blue Whale Life-Sized on Your Computer? Now You Can
published December 9, 2010 and has No Comments
Photo: USFWS Endangered Species / CC In the middle of the last century, things weren't looking good for the majestic Short-tailed Albatross. From a hardy population estimated to be in the millions just decades earlier, the bird's numbers underwent a dramatic decline from over-hunting -- nearly disappearing from th... Read the full story on TreeHugger Read more: Bird Once Thought ...
Read more...published November 23, 2010 and has No Comments
Photo: Stephen Messenger For a species of bird found only in the forests of North America and so symbolic of a U.S. holiday , the humble turkey sure has an oddly Eurasian name -- but have you ever stopped to consider why? Well, it turns out that the origins of how this jowly bird arrived at its strikingly Turkish ...
Read more...published November 20, 2010 and has No Comments
Photo: Rainbirder under a Creative Commons license Russia's been having a record breaking autumn weather-wise, with temperatures in Altai, in southwestern Siberia, remaining as high as 41° Fahrenheit. And it looks like the balmy weather has attracted some new residents: on Tuesday, a flock of seven African pink pelicans landed in the village of Suslovo, reported Reuters . The ...
Read more...published November 8, 2010 and has No Comments
Photo: Flickr , CC Studying Bird Flight Patterns Can Lead to Better Conservation Efforts It's pretty obvious that a lot of human activities affect birds directly (millions of birds are killed by cars, cats, buildings, pesticides, etc), but just the presence of human structures on the ground can apparently affect bird flight patterns and populations. Indeed, birds might seem ...
Read more...published November 2, 2010 and has No Comments
Photo: Wikipedia , CC Not Adapted to This New Threat For most of their existence as a species, birds haven't evolved in an environment where something like a power line could be in their flight trajectory. Because of this, they mostly look down while flying to find other birds, nesting areas, and places where they can feed. If there's ...
Read more...published October 28, 2010 and has No Comments
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons Since the 1970s, the population of Galapagos penguins —the only penguin species to reside in the northern hemisphere—has decreased by more than 50 percent . Habitat loss and competition from invasive species are thought to be the two drivers of this decline—which, if left unchecked, is expected to lead to extinction before the end of ...
Read more...published October 28, 2010 and has No Comments
photo: Nicholas Doumani / Creative Commons Just days after Syncrude was fined over C$3 million for Here is the original post: 350 More Ducks Killed In Canada's Toxic Tar Sands Tailing Ponds
Read more...published October 17, 2010 and has No Comments
A screenshot from the Pot Plant Owl's webcam , via Africam.com . In August 2009, Allan and Tracy Eccles woke up to find a spotted eagle owl sitting in a potted plant on their balcony in suburban Johannesburg, South Africa. Thus began the saga of Pot Plant Owl, who still nests there, with her mate, and is currently raising ...
Read more...published October 10, 2010 and has No Comments
Photo via Orange Bill's Facebook Page It turns out that it's not just humans who flock to Los Angeles with dreams of being in front of the camera. During a music-video shoot for the band OK Go filmed in Echo Park, one bold goose decided to get in on the action by inserting itself into nearly every shot. While ...
Read more...published September 30, 2010 and has No Comments
'Full metal jacket' - copper covered - bullet example. Image credit: Sportsmens Guide. A group of small 'environmental groups' that I never heard of before are upset that USEPA recently turned down a petition to ban the use of all lead bullets (the part at the end of the cartridge), nationwide. They seem to infer the Agency was swayed ...
Read more...
Contrary to previously held notions of how whale songs are shared between neighboring populations, a surprising study finds that whales living the same ocean basin are singing different songs. Read the original post: Study: Humpback Whales Living in Same Ocean ...
"The technology that we have here gives us a first-ever look at the Amazon in its full three-dimensional detail, over very large regions," says the study's lead researcher. Here is the original post: Lasers Used to Generate Remarkably Detailed 3D ...
