Tag Archives: Hawaii

A shellfish diet might be even better than going vegan

by LieseloSteffen Posted on June 12, 2018

Not all fish are created equal when it comes to their impact on the climate. In the prophetic words of Dr. Seuss: “Some are glad. And some are sad. And some are very, very bad.”

A new study takes a rare look at the carbon emissions that come with your choice of seafood. And there are a lot of surprises. Farming catfish creates more emissions than farming chicken, while eating shellfish is even more climate-friendly than a purely vegan diet, according to the study.

This suggests that not all pescetarianism is created equal — and throws another loop into the complicated task of ranking fish sustainability. Take the aforementioned farmed catfish. The Monterey Bay Aquarium calls catfish raised in tanks a “best choice.” But when the researchers looked at the full lifecycle of resources needed to support catfish farms, they found that they were pretty dirty. The recirculating pumps needed to control conditions in catfish tanks require a significant amount of energy, and a lot of that energy comes from coal plants in Asia.

Your lobster bisque is almost as bad: The motors used to check lobster pots burn up a lot of gas. “Lobster has a terrible carbon footprint,” says Ray Hilborn, one of the researchers responsible for the study. On the other side of the scale were mollusk aquaculture — oysters, mussels, scallops, and clams — which are wonderfully efficient, and small wild fish, which don’t take much energy to gather up.

The methods used in the study were sound, and results line up with the findings of other studies, says Richard Waite, a food expert at the World Resources Institute, who was not involved in the research. However, this study didn’t consider the amount of land that different animals require, Waite notes.

About half the greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture come from farmers clearing forests. If you include the land needed to feed the animals, it significantly increases the emissions released in livestock production — making fish look better by comparison. And if you consider the type of land being cleared for farms, it downgrades the sustainability of shrimp farms in Southeast Asia. (It is possible to do shrimp farming right, as Amelia Urry found when she visited this cool shrimpery in Hawaii.)

Percentage mangrove deforestation between 2000 and 2012, and dominant land uses of deforested areas in 2012.Richards and Friess

But Waite agreed with the study’s major conclusions. It’s just hard to beat a shellfish farm, he says: “There’s no land use at all, no freshwater use, no fertilizer use — in fact, they clean up the surrounding water.” Shellfish farms are usually in coastal waters, where there’s plenty of space. Consider those factors together, and it looks like it’s more environmentally friendly to get your calories from mussels than from veggies and beans.

The study was supported by a grant from the Seafood Industry Research Fund. Funding can often subtly (or not so subtly) influence science, but in this case it’s unlikely to have done so, given the study was comparing the relative merits of different sectors of the seafood industry.

“A real surprise to me was how low the impact of salmon farming was,” study author Hilborn says. “I’ve done a lot of work with Alaska fishers and they basically hate salmon farming, but it looks like it’s not so bad.”

For a long time, people have been saying that seafood could be a sustainable solution as we try to feed a more crowded planet. But it’s important to discriminate between the good and the “very, very bad.” This one has a little star — it’s basically carbon neutral. And this one has a little car — it’s a fossil-fueled fish. Stay away from the fossil-fueled fish.

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A shellfish diet might be even better than going vegan

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Humans didn’t exist the last time there was this much CO2 in the air

by FlorencFrencham Posted on May 3, 2018

The last time atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were this high, millions of years ago, the planet was very different. For one, humans didn’t exist.

On Wednesday, scientists at the University of California in San Diego confirmed that April’s monthly average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration breached 410 parts per million for the first time in our history.

We know a lot about how to track these changes. The Earth’s carbon dioxide levels peak around this time every year for a pretty straightforward reason. There’s more landmass in the northern hemisphere, and plants grow in a seasonal cycle. During the summer, they suck down CO2, during the winter, they let it back out. The measurements were made at Mauna Loa, Hawaii — a site chosen for its pristine location far away from the polluting influence of a major city.

Increasingly though, pollution from the world’s cities is making its way to Mauna Loa — and everywhere else on Earth.

In little more than a century of frenzied fossil-fuel burning, we humans have altered our planet’s atmosphere at a rate dozens of times faster than natural climate change. Carbon dioxide is now more than 100 ppm higher than any direct measurements from Antarctic ice cores over the past 800,000 years, and probably significantly higher than anything the planet has experienced for at least 15 million years. That includes eras when Earth was largely ice-free.

Not only are carbon dioxide levels rising each year, they are accelerating. Carbon dioxide is climbing at twice the pace it was 50 years ago. Even the increases are increasing.

That’s happening for several reasons, most important of which is that we’re still burning a larger amount of fossil fuels each year. Last year, humanity emitted the highest level of greenhouse gas emissions in history — even after factoring in the expansion of renewable energy. At the same time, the world’s most important carbon sinks — our forests — are dying, and therefore losing their ability to pull carbon dioxide out of the air and store it safely in the soil. The combination of these effects means we are losing ground, and fast.

Without a bold shift in our actions, in 30 years atmospheric carbon dioxide will return back to levels last reached just after the extinction of the dinosaurs, more than 50 million years ago. At that point, it might be too late to prevent permanent, dangerous feedback loops from kicking in.

This is the biggest problem humanity has ever faced, and we’ve barely even begun to address it effectively. On our current pace, factoring in current climate policies of every nation on Earth, the best independent analyses show that we are on course for warming of about 3.4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, enough to extinguish entire ecosystems and destabilize human civilization.

Climate change demands the urgent attention and cooperation of every government around the world. But even though most countries have acknowledged the danger, the ability to limit our emissions eludes us. After 23 years of United Nations summits on climate change, the time has come for radical thinking and radical action — a social movement with the power to demand a better future.

Of the two dozen or so official UN scenarios that show humanity curbing global warming to the goals agreed to in the 2015 Paris Accord, not one show success without the equivalent of a technological miracle. It’s easier to imagine outlandish technologies, like carbon capture, geoengineering, or fusion power than self-control.

Our failed approach to climate change is mostly a failure of imagination. We are not fated to this path. We can do better. Yes, there are some truly colossal headwinds, but we still control our future. Forgetting that fact is sure to doom us all.

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Humans didn’t exist the last time there was this much CO2 in the air

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20,000 Hawaiians could lose their homes to sea-level rise.

by IJFGarry0613786 Posted on January 3, 2018

After long days of reading about the dismantling of the EPA, I wanted to think about anything but politics. Samin Nosrat’s wonderful cookbook provided plenty of fodder.

Nosrat breaks cooking into its key elements; food science becomes clear and usable. For example: Roast chicken should get a hearty dose of kosher or sea salt the day before going in the oven. In a wild and woolly year, apolitical facts such as these were a godsend, and they actually got me to cook more.

Take dinner with a friend (and former Grist fellow) who was guest-writing the excellent newsletter WTF Just Happened Today. He got up early every day to sort through Trump administration noise and summarize the real news. He was, as you might expect, questioning everything. A distillation of our conversation:

Him: “All of this has me thinking about printing press capitalism’s link to the rise of nationalism. And with that, how international news has expanded our idea of community despite our inherent lack of agency. How about that?”

*Throws ingredients into soup*

Me: “What kind of salt you using over there, big guy?”

One night, I used the cookbook to make buttermilk chicken for this friend and others. They filtered in, various degrees of flustered and wide-eyed. I placed the skillet on the table and our manners and worries melted away. We ripped meat off the bones and gestured that yes, you should really just grab a handful of potatoes to scoop up the sauce. 

The world was still going batshit outside my door, but we could ignore it for a little while. We laughed and chatted as the salt and fat dripped down our chins.

Darby Minow Smith is the senior managing editor at Grist.

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20,000 Hawaiians could lose their homes to sea-level rise.

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The Solace of Open Spaces – Gretel Ehrlich

by Myrna Posted on May 21, 2017

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

The Solace of Open Spaces
Essays
Gretel Ehrlich

Genre: Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: February 21, 2017

Publisher: Open Road Media

Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC


These transcendent, lyrical essays on the West announced Gretel Ehrlich as a major American writer—“Wyoming has found its Whitman” (Annie Dillard). Poet and filmmaker Gretel Ehrlich went to Wyoming in 1975 to make the first in a series of documentaries when her partner died. Ehrlich stayed on and found she couldn’t leave. The Solace of Open Spaces is a chronicle of her first years on “the planet of Wyoming,” a personal journey into a place, a feeling, and a way of life.   Ehrlich captures both the otherworldly beauty and cruelty of the natural forces—the harsh wind, bitter cold, and swiftly changing seasons—in the remote reaches of the American West. She brings depth, tenderness, and humor to her portraits of the peculiar souls who also call it home: hermits and ranchers, rodeo cowboys and schoolteachers, dreamers and realists. Together, these essays form an evocative and vibrant tribute to the life Ehrlich chose and the geography she loves.   Originally written as journal entries addressed to a friend, The Solace of Open Spaces is raw, meditative, electrifying, and uncommonly wise. In prose “as expansive as a Wyoming vista, as charged as a bolt of prairie lightning,” Ehrlich explores the magical interplay between our interior lives and the world around us ( Newsday ). “Vivid, tough, and funny . . . Wyoming has found its Whitman . . . An exuberant and powerful book.” —Annie Dillard, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek   “[Ehrlich] brings the long vistas into focus with the poise of an Ansel Adams. . . . She has been to the mountaintop and seen the mountain for what it is.” — The New York Times Book Review   “A stunning rumination on life on Wyoming’s high plains . . . Ehrlich’s gorgeous prose is as expansive as a Wyoming vista, as charged as a bolt of prairie lightning.” — Newsday   “Ehrlich’s best prose belongs in a league with Annie Dillard and even Thoreau. The Solace of Open Spaces releases the bracing air of the wilderness into the stuffy, heated confines of winter in civilization.” — San Francisco Chronicle   “The most exciting new prose I’ve come across this season . . . Part travelogue, part meditation, these twelve pieces are lyrical, humorous, and eye-opening.” — Glamour Gretel Ehrlich is an award-winning writer and naturalist. Born and raised in California, she was educated at Bennington College and UCLA Film School. She is the author of thirteen books, including the essay collection The Solace of Open Spaces (1985), the novel Heart Mountain (1988), and the memoirs A Match to the Heart : One Woman’s Story of Being Struck by Lightning (1994) and This Cold Heaven : Seven Seasons in Greenland (2001), as well as The Future of Ice: A Journey into Cold (2004), and, most recently, Facing the Wave : A Journey in the Wake of a Tsunami (2014). Her prose pieces have appeared in Harper’s , the Atlantic , the New York Times Magazine , and National Geographic , among many other publications. Ehrlich lives in Montana and Hawaii.

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The Solace of Open Spaces – Gretel Ehrlich

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Trump’s Lawyers Want the Courts to Ignore His Muslim Ban Comments

by WillaAbercrombi Posted on May 8, 2017

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump’s statements about banning Muslims during the presidential campaign are now at the heart of the court battle over his travel ban.

On Monday, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals held oral arguments on the president’s executive order banning people from six Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States for 90 days. In reviewing the decision of a federal district judge in Maryland, who blocked the ban from going into effect, the judges of the 4th Circuit focused almost exclusively on the question of whether Trump’s campaign pledge to ban Muslims should be taken into consideration when weighing the constitutionality of the travel ban.

In December 2015, then-candidate Trump called for “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” Trump repeated and stuck by his policy throughout the campaign. His original statement remained on his campaign’s website until sometime Monday, when it disappeared around the time a reporter asked about its continued presence online during the daily White House press briefing.

After his election, Trump swiftly signed an executive order banning individuals from seven Muslim-majority countries entering the country for 90 days. Federal courts blocked the order, and the administration withdrew it and released a second, modified travel ban. This second order applied to six countries—Iraq was taken off the list—and included exceptions for permanent legal residents and current visa-holders. Still, a federal judge in Maryland blocked part of it and another federal judge in Hawaii placed a nationwide injunction on the whole order.

In considering the Maryland judge’s decision, the 4th Circuit zeroed in on the issue of Trump’s statements about banning Muslims. During the first hour of the hearing, Trump’s acting solicitor general, Jeffrey Wall, repeatedly argued that the Maryland judge had relied too heavily on Trump’s campaign statements. He described the ban as merely a handful of statements by the candidate, rather than a central piece of Trump’s campaign, and said the Maryland judge had mistakenly conducted a “psychoanalysis” of the president based on these campaign comments.

Opponents of the ban argue that Trump’s campaign statements are key to understanding the true purpose of the order. Arguing against the travel ban, American Civil Liberties Union attorney Omar Jadwat struggled when the judges pressed him to explain his opposition to the travel ban based just on the text—without taking Trump’s campaign statements into consideration. Some of the judges repeatedly queried Jadwat on whether the ban would still be constitutional if Trump’s comments were not part of the calculation. Jadwat said it would be because it violates the First Amendment by targeting people of a specific religion. In order to fulfill its stated purpose on national security, he argued, it would have applied to a different set of countries than those targeted by the order. “If this order were legitimate and actually doing what it said it was doing, it would do something different,” he said.

But without Trump’s campaign statements targeting Muslims, at least some of the judges did not appear to buy his argument. That’s why he continued to emphasize the thinking behind the travel ban. “The question is, what is the purpose of this policy?” Jadwat asked. He noted that when Trump signed the order, he read aloud its title referring to “foreign terrorist entry” and then added, “We all know what that means.” Jadwat further pointed to the fact that 2015 press release still on Trump’s campaign website—not realizing it had been taken down just hours earlier.

Perhaps the most compelling argument against the ban on Monday came not from the ACLU’s lawyer but from Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general whom Trump fired in January when she refused to have Justice Department lawyers defend the first travel ban in court. Questioned about that decision during a hearing on Capitol Hill on Monday, Yates explained why she believed the ban was unconstitutional—and why the president’s campaign remarks were a key ingredient in that calculation.

“I believed that any argument that we would have to make in its defense would not be grounded in the truth,” she explained, “because to make an argument in its defense we would have to argue that the executive order had nothing to do with religion, that it was not done with an intent to discriminate against Muslims.” But Yates could not ignore the role of religion, she explained, because of what Trump had said about Muslims. “Particularly where we were talking about a fundamental issue of religious freedom—not the interpretation of some arcane statute, but religious freedom—it was appropriate for us to look at the intent behind the president’s actions,” she said. “And the intent is laid out in his statements.”

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Trump’s Lawyers Want the Courts to Ignore His Muslim Ban Comments

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This Bumble Bee was Just Added to the Endangered Species List

by ClydeBrigstocke Posted on January 13, 2017

Mother Jones

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Earlier this week, the rusty patched bumblebee became the first bee in the continental United States to be added to the endangered species list. The designation was one of the Obama Administration’s last environmental moves.

There’s good reason this bee is now on the list: Its population has plummeted by 87 percent since the 1990s. According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, the bee once inhabited two provinces of Canada as well as 28 states, and Washington DC. Today it’s found in only two of its original habitats.

Greg Hottman/Flickr

The combination of disease, climate change, and loss of habitat have contributed to the species’ decline. But perhaps the greatest threat to this and other bees is neonicotinoids, a type of insecticide that’s commonly used on farm crops, pets, and gardens. (My colleague Tom Philpott has written extensively on the subject.) Bumblebees are thought to be even more susceptible to pesticides than honey bees are.

Sadly, many other organisms rely on this species to reproduce: The rusty patched bumble is a pollinator for various plants, including peppers, cranberries, and tomatoes.

Though the insect is the first bee in the continental United States to be placed on the list, seven yellow-faced bees, found in Hawaii, were put on the endangered species list in September of last year.

While the rusty patched bumble bee enjoys more protection under the Endangered Species Act, please enjoy these photos of the fuzzy creatures.

Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry/Flickr

Smithsonian’s National Zoo

Dan Mullen/Flickr

USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab/Flickr

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This Bumble Bee was Just Added to the Endangered Species List

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Here’s a List of the Information Trump Has Promised but Not Released

by SVPChandayrt Posted on October 15, 2016

Mother Jones

As the allegations of sexual assault piled up against Donald Trump this week, the Republican nominee promised that he would release a trove of exculpatory evidence “at the appropriate time.” On Friday morning, running mate Mike Pence said this other shoe would drop within “hours” and this information would disprove Trump’s accusers. By the end of the day, the only information that Trump produced was thin and bizarre.

The Trump campaign put forward a British man who claimed to have a “photographic memory” and who told the New York Post that he was on the flight with Trump and one of Trump’s accusers 30-plus years ago, that he remembered the entire incident, and that her story of being groped by Trump while sitting next to the mogul in the first class section was not true. The Brit claimed nothing had happened during the entire flight. (A Trump spokeswoman had previously claimed that Trump did not fly on commercial airlines during the 1980s, so this seemed to prove that Trump’s account was wrong.) The British fellow would have been about 18-years-old at the time and didn’t explain why he had been flying first-class. And two years ago, he generated British headlines by claiming that when he was 17 he procured young men for sex parties with British politicians. The Trump campaign also released a statement from the cousin of an accuser who had appeared on The Apprentice, and this man asserted that his cousin had for years not complained about Trump and had only raised these allegations after Trump recently declined an invitation to visit her restaurant.

None of this was the firm proof that Trump had promised. And this wasn’t the first time that Trump has vowed to release information and then failed to produce the goods. Here’s a quick guide:

Tax returns: At the height of his birther crusade in 2011, Trump offered a challenge to President Barack Obama: if the commander-in-chief released his long-form birth certificate, Trump would put out his tax returns. Obama did release a long-form birth certificate, after which point Trump told ABC that he would release his taxes “at the appropriate time.” That time never came.

Tax returns again: In January Trump said on Meet the Press that he would release his tax returns imminently. “We’re working on that now,” he said. “I have big returns, as you know, and I have everything all approved and very beautiful and we’ll be working that over in the next period of time.” But after a month passed and he still hadn’t produced his tax returns, Trump said at a Republican primary debate that he couldn’t release his tax returns because he was under audit. (The IRS has said that an audit would not prevent Trump from releasing the returns.) Running mate Mike Pence and top surrogate Ben Carson have both said Trump will release the returns at “the appropriate time.” Which brings us to…

Proof he’s being audited: Trump promised to release a letter proving that he was under audit. In March, in response to to repeated inquiries and promises to release documentation pertaining to the audit, Trump produced a letter from his lawyer (dated three weeks earlier) saying that his returns from 2009 until the present were under review by the IRS. But Trump’s lawyers are paid by Trump. He has not produced any correspondence from the IRS that would confirm an audit was under way.

List of creditors: When NBC News’ Lester Holt asked Trump at the first presidential debate why he had not released his tax returns, Trump made a counteroffer: he would release a list of his creditors instead. “I could give you a list of banks,” he said. “I would—if that would help you, I would give you a list of banks. These are very fine institutions, very fine banks. I could do that very quickly.” Three weeks later, though, Trump has still not released that list.

Secret information in Hawaii: In 2011 Trump claimed to have sent investigators to Hawaii to uncover the truth about Obama’s birth certificate, and he said he would release the results of their investigation “at a certain point in time.” No grand announcement ever came. “He’ll reveal it when the time is right,” Tana Goertz, the co-chair of Trump campaign’s in Iowa, told MSNBC last summer. “If they found something, it will come out. The time isn’t right, and guess what? Mr. Trump does what he wants and he’s not going to do it on our time. He’s going to do it when the timing is perfectly strategic and it’s not now and it wasn’t the place for him to say it.”

Melania’s immigration documents: Following reports that Melania Trump had (illegally) worked in the United States under a tourist visa in the 1990s, Trump vowed to hold a press conference featuring his wife to set the record straight. No press conference ever occurred. Weeks later, the Trump campaign released a statement from her lawyer, but it was accompanied by no corroborating documents.

Medical records: In September, as Trump was claiming that Hillary Clinton was in poor health, ABC’ News’ David Muir asked why he didn’t release his own medical records. “I might do that, I might do that,” Trump said. “In fact, now that you ask, I think I will do that. I’d love to give full reports.” Trump had previously released a one-page letter from his gastroenterologist that was widely dismissed by medical experts as odd and unprofessional, and he later revealed additional medical details (from the same doctor) on Dr. Oz’s television show. But Trump has yet to produce a full medical report.

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Here’s a List of the Information Trump Has Promised but Not Released

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Wave power has finally come to the United States.

by EssieCajigas Posted on September 21, 2016

This weekend, Máxima Acuña, winner of the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize, was assaulted on her property in Peru. Since 2011, Acuña has resisted the development of the Conga gold mine by U.S.-based Newmont Mining by refusing to vacate her home — and, for that, has faced both legal prosecution and physical intimidation.

As a result of the attack, allegedly perpetrated by agents of Minera Yanacocha (Newmont’s Peruvian subsidiary), Acuña is now in the hospital and her family’s crops are destroyed, according to Amnesty International.

Nor, tragically, is this attack an isolated instance of violence against indigenous women protecting their land. Earlier this year, Berta Cáceres — winner of the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize for her efforts in blocking hydroelectric developments on Lenca land in Honduras — was murdered at home, allegedly by employees of DESA, the developer behind the proposed dams.

When we spoke to Acuña in April, she told us, with eerie foresight: “Because these businesses are very powerful, I don’t know what awaits me when I get back [home]. But this isn’t a cause of fear for me – it’s not a motive for us to stop fighting, to stop defending.”

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Wave power has finally come to the United States.

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Solar Powered Airplane ‘Explores The Impossible’

by GeorgiannaRead Posted on July 28, 2016

When you get on an airplane to fly across the country – or even across the ocean – you probably don’t think too much about how much fuel is actually being used by that airplane you’re sitting on. You probably also don’t think about exactly what the environmental impact of that one flight might be, not to mention the collective environmental impact of all of the flights that happen around the world each and every day. The numbers add up pretty quickly!

According to this article, one flight from New York to Phoenix consumes approximately 6,900 gallons of fuel.
It’s estimated that there are approximately 100,000 flights around the world each day. If you do the math, that’s approximately 3.7 million flights per year throughout the world.

This data adds up to a whole lot of fuel usage and contribution to the world’s pollution problem – not to mention any other environmental issues that go with the petroleum and transportation industries.

An impulse for a solar powered airplane

Swiss pioneers Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg are trying to change the conversation on clean energy and the possibilities of solar powered airplane transportation. Image credit: Solar Impulse SA

If we’re looking honestly at ways to significantly reduce our impact on this earth, reducing fuel use is certainly one area worth looking at. We can buy hybrid and electric cars now, but the options aren’t so simple for flying. We have our choice of airlines, but the planes are all pretty much the same. For now, anyways.

Swiss pioneers Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg are trying to change the conversation and prove that energy doesn’t have to be a dirty word. Piccard (a psychiatrist and explorer with an avant-gardist vision) and Borschberg (an engineer and entrepreneur with managerial experience) have set out to achieve something that sounds pretty much impossible with our knowledge of energy and technology today. Piccard and Borschberg are attempting the first around the world solar powered airplane flight, using no fuel with absolutely no harmful emissions.

Can you imagine if every flight around the world every day could make that claim? How would that change the world?

Be the change you want to see in the world. – Mahatma Gandhi

That famous quote is most certainly appropriate in this inspiring story. Instead of huffing and puffing about the state our planet is currently in, Piccard, Borschberg and their team are doing something about it. They are pouring everything they have into demonstrating that solar technology can do far more than power a few lightbulbs in your home – it can power the world if that’s where we set our intentions.

Solar Impulse 2

Solar Impulse 2, a completely solar powered airplane, is the result of the dreams of these two men. This airplane is powered only by the sun, with absolutely no fuel or polluting emissions. And there is no back-up to the solar powered energy.

This solar powered airplane has the wingspan of a Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet, the weight of a typical family car and the power of a small motorcycle. Solar Impulse 2 is the largest aircraft ever built with such a low weight. Even though the plane has a huge wingspan, the pilot is the only person that can be on the plane – so every flight is a solo flight.

A lot of work went into the design and construction of Solar Impulse 2. It took 12 years of research and development to develop this aircraft, which is powered by dozens of environmentally friendly products and processes.

Some of these features include:

Ultralight material
Solar cells
Energy dense batteries
Lightweight LEDs
Low density thermal insulation
Energy efficient electric motors
Smart energy system
Protective resins

This amazing 360 degree video below shows you what it’s like for this aircraft to take off and land – and see the inside of the cockpit. 

Solar Impulse 2 sets record for solo flights

The Solar Impulse 2 took its maiden flight from Abu Dhabi to Muscat, Oman on March 9, 2015. They have since made it quite far along in their journey and will soon make it back to Abu Dhabi and complete their around the world flight goals.

Earlier this year, the Solar Impluse 2 team set a record for solo flights (so far, the Solar Impulse prototype has set 8 world records). The pilot flew non-stop for 5 days and 5 nights without fuel from Nagoya, Japan to Hawaii. After 117 hours and 52 minutes and approximately 8,900 km in the air, the pilot had to land the plane in Hawaii due to unforeseen battery damage due to overheating.

Image Credit: Solar Impulse SA

After many tests and repairs were completed, the Solar Impluse 2 was able to cross the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco, where it landed safely. The pilots (Piccard and Borschberg both pilot the aircraft) are currently continuing on their journey around the world. This is a truly historic event to watch, as every day puts them one step closer to completing the first around-the-world trip without a drop of carbon-based fuel.

Follow along

While the Solar Impluse 2’s exact travel dates are undetermined, you can sign up to receive flash updates on the plane’s adventures here. It’s a lot of fun to keep up to date and watch where the Solar Impulse 2 is in its journey. I can’t wait to see it make its final landing in Abu Dhabi! What a great feeling that will be for Piccard and Borschberg, and what a great step forward in clean energy for our world.

A message to the world

This historic attempt to fly a solar powered airplane around the world is certainly sending all of us a clear message about our energy consumption. If we can harness the plane’s clean energy technologies on the ground in our day-to-day lives, its speculated that we could cut the world’s energy consumption in half, saving precious natural resources and improving our overall quality of life.

The pilots have made it their mission to spread this message to the general public at large, students that will shape the world’s future, key decision-makers in government and business, and entrepreneurs all around the world.

Where would you like to see solar powered airplane technology go?

Feature image credit: Solar Impulse SA

About
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Chrystal Johnson

Chrystal, publisher of

Happy Mothering

, Founder of

Green Moms Media

and essential oil fanatic, is a mother of two sweet girls who believes in living a simple, natural lifestyle. A former corporate marketing communication manager, Chrystal spends her time researching green and eco-friendly alternatives to improve her family’s life.

Latest posts by Chrystal Johnson (see all)

Solar Powered Airplane ‘Explores The Impossible’ – July 28, 2016
Join The Live Plastic Free July Challenge – July 1, 2016
Light Up The Room By Upcycling A Glass Bottle – June 30, 2016

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Solar Powered Airplane ‘Explores The Impossible’

Posted in alo, eco-friendly, FF, Gandhi, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Solar Powered Airplane ‘Explores The Impossible’

A handful of the world’s coral reefs are actually thriving

by VanitaTousignant Posted on June 16, 2016

A handful of the world’s coral reefs are actually thriving

By on Jun 16, 2016Share

Coral reefs seem to be having a bad century, with global bleaching events and the Great Barrier Reef fading away before our eyes.

But there’s a bright spot, folks! Actually, there are 15 of them, according to a new study published in Nature.

A group of marine researchers has identified places where reef ecosystems are thriving despite environmental and human pressures. These “bright spots” are rays of hope for future conservation efforts, which may use them to apply better practices to less lucky places.

The study drew data from 2,500 reefs in 46 countries. The 15 reefs with unexpectedly robust fish populations were not necessarily in the most remote areas with low fishing activity. In fact, most of them included “localities where human populations and use of ecosystem resources is high,” the study notes. They are also typically found in the Pacific Ocean, in places like the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and parts of Indonesia.

The bright spots, it turns out, tend to benefit from responsible local management and traditional customs. For example, on Papua New Guinea’s Karkar Island, locals have the right to prevent outsiders from fishing in their particular plot of ocean. They also practice a rotational fishing system where, as in farming, they leave off fishing a part of the reef to allow populations to recover.

On the flip side are the 35 “dark spots” the study identified, where fish stocks aren’t faring too well. These are places like Hawaii and Australia where locals tend to have greater access to fishing technologies — such as nets and freezers for stockpiling fish — that aid and abet intensive exploitation. Dark spots also were more likely to be suffering from recent environmental shocks, like bleaching.

Experts hope to use the bright spots as blueprints for more creative conservation efforts.

“We believe that the bright spots offer hope and some solutions that can be applied more broadly across the world’s coral reefs,” says Josh Cinner, the lead author on the study. “Specifically, investments that foster local involvement and provide people with ownership rights can allow people to develop creative solutions that help defy expectations of reef fisheries depletion.”

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A handful of the world’s coral reefs are actually thriving

Posted in alo, Anchor, Brita, Eureka, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, Oster, solar, solar panels, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A handful of the world’s coral reefs are actually thriving