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6 Adventurous Apps That Encourage You to Get Outside

by RositaKrier Posted on March 26, 2016

Technology and nature seem like an incongruous match. After all, when youre urging your kids to go play outside, its usually in an attempt to distract them from the allure of the Internet and their devices, not an effort to engage them in yet another online activity or app.

But don’t be too quick to dismiss technology. While it’s fun, outdoor exploration is also an informal educational pursuit, and the Internet offers a wealth of information that can help match difficult concepts like biology and astronomy with real-life examples in nature, creating a solid foundation for scientific curiosity and inspiring new knowledge on a daily basis.

Turn a tablet or phone into an instrument for inquiry with nature apps to make the great outdoors with your family even greater. Below are some apps to get you started.

Source: Leafsnap

Leafsnap: Identify foliage in a flash with this interactive field guide developed by Columbia University, the University of Maryland and the Smithsonian Institute by taking a photo of leaves, fruit or bark against a sheet of white paper. Currently the database only contains trees in the Northeastern United States, but the guide is spreading its roots and growing. Leafsnap is free in the app store and is coming soon to Android.

Source: Merlin Bird

Merlin Bird ID: Magic is for the birds with this fun app that asks five easy questions to help guess which bird has been sighted and then offers tips, resources and additional information including sound clips from Cornell Labs Macaulay Library. This free app opens up a whole new world of possibilities for burgeoning birders and is available for iOS and Android devices.

Source: Geocaching

Geocaching.com: Treasure meets technology with geocaching, a hide-and-seek activity thats fun for all ages. GPS coordinates lead players to hidden caches of tokens and small items in this satellite-led scavenger hunt. With over 2.5 million spots listed globally, the free Geocaching.com app on iOS, Android and Windows devices can help you find local loot.

Source: Star Walk

Star Walk: Explore the universe with Star Walk, a real-time astronomy guide that augments reality to show constellations, planets, stars and satellites in their actual place in the sky above. A time machine feature allows users to see a map of nights in the past or future, and a calendar of events ensures youll never miss anything interesting. Star Walk is a paid app available on iOS, Android, Kindle and Windows devices.

Source: Plum’s Photo Hunt

PBS KIDS! Plums Photo Hunt: Kids are encouraged to take a closer look at the world through a new lens with scavenger hunts out in nature. Photo missions include quests like finding signs of animal life, taking a weather-related photo or searching for patterns in nature. The app also includes a field journal so little explorers can organize and analyze their findings, as well as a photo editing app to add characters to their shots. Plums Photo Hunt is free and only available on iOS devices.

Source: Project Noah

Project Noah: Go out into the field with your citizen scientist and submit photos of nature to help with actual research missions and to earn virtual patches for participation. The community can help identify findings and the constantly growing field guide is informative. This app is recommended for ages 10 and up due to the social component but is best used as a family activity anyway. The Project Noah app is available for free on iOS and Android devices.

Kids have a natural curiosity that leads to a desire to learn, and often make discoveries about life and the world they live in through the simple act of playing in the dirt or sitting in a tree. While its true that technology isnt necessary for good old-fashioned outdoor fun, its possible to turn screen time into green time with educational apps that explore nature in a way thats interesting, social and scientific, too.

Ashley McCann writes for eBay about her life as a mother of two young boys. Rather than fight their attraction to electronics, shes found ways to embrace it and purchase affordable options online.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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6 Adventurous Apps That Encourage You to Get Outside

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6 Reasons Why You Should Never Use VOC Paint Again

by FaustoLWHK Posted on March 21, 2016

You’re probably used to buying paint either by the brand name or by the color, like Benjamin Moore, or blue.

But when it comes to covering your walls and ceiling, there’s a much more important decision you should be making, and that has to do with the chemicals actually used to make the paint itself.

One of the most toxic is actually a group collectively referred to as “volatile organic compounds,” or VOCs.

VOCs are a large group of carbon-based chemicals that easily evaporate at room temperature, which makes them easy to inhale. One of the most common sources of VOCs in our homes is household paint. VOCs are used as solvents, or thinners, that work together with the resins that bind together all the ingredients of the paint and gets them to stick on the wall. In other words, they may improve performance and durability, explains DunnEdwards.com here.

However, the VOCs “off gas”into the air as the paint dries. Most people can smell high levels of some VOCS, though other VOCs have no odor. Odor does not indicate how dangerous the chemicals are, says the Minnesota Department of Health. Regardless of how badly they smell,many VOCs,which can include formaldehyde, acetone, benzene and perchloroethylene, canmake you sick in a variety of ways.

That’s why I’ve pulled together this list of 6 reasons why you should never use paint that contains VOCs again.

1) Worsen symptoms of asthma. If you already suffer from asthma, inhaling air contaminated with VOCs could trigger an asthmatic reaction. Scientists studied 400 toddlers and preschoolers and discovered that children who breathed in fumes from water-based paints and solvents are two to four times more likely to suffer allergies or asthma.

2) Create flu-like symptoms. Even if you don’t get asthma from breathing in paint fumes, you could experience runny nose, itchy eyes, joint pain and other symptoms that strongly resemble the flu.Solvents that evaporate into the air from the paint are inhaled, absorbed into the lungs and then into the blood stream. They can irritate the eyes, nose and throat and make you feel like you’ve contracted the flu.

3) Potentially cause cancer. Many chemicals in the VOC family are considered carcinogenic by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Professional painters have a 20 percent increased risk of contracting a range of cancers, especially lung cancer, says the World Health Organization.

4) Get dizzy and black out. Sometimes the chemicals that off-gas in VOC-laden paint are so overpowering, they cause people to get very dizzy and in extreme cases, black out. This could be particularly dangerous if you were at the top of a ladder, perhaps painting a ceiling, where you were inhaling paint fumes very close to the source.

5) Suffer infertility problems – A study from Sheffield and Manchester University suggested that men regularly exposed to chemicals in paint may be more prone to fertility problems. Painters and decorators are the primary victims. However, the researchers found a 250 percent increase in “risk of sperm motility” among men exposed to the chemicals widely used as solvents in water-based paints, which could give any guy pause about using paints that contain VOCs.

6) Get “painter’s dementia” – In addition to increased likelihood of getting lung cancer, painters can develop a neurological condition brought on by long-term exposure to paint solvents called “painter’s dementia.”

What You Can Use Instead

You could decide to forego paints that contain VOCs because it’s the right thing to do for your painter!

Increasingly, you can buy paint that contains no VOCs online and from stores that specialize in healthy green building supplies. Consumer Reports offers this helpful guide to VOC content to look for when you shop; if you’re a subscriber, you can see how they rate various no- or low-VOC paints that are available in the marketplace.

Most major brands, including Home Depot, Benjamin Moore and Pittsburgh Paints, make a no-VOC option. Just be careful when the paint is mixed, as the base paint could be no-VOC but the color pigment could contain VOCs. You want the entire mixture to be no-VOC.

Water-based paints will have less VOCs in them than oil-based paints. However, there’s no guarantee that just because a paint is water-based that it will be VOC-free. You must explicitly ask for no-VOC paint before you buy.

Regardless of the paint you use, make sure the room or house is well-ventilated while it is being painted. Turn on fans and open windows and doors. If possible, do not sleep in a room that has been freshly painted; especially don’t sleep in or use a room if the paint on the walls isn’t completely dry. If you wake up with a headache or discomfort, do not sleep in the room for a couple of days, until you’re sure it’s fragrance-free.

Related
Feng Shui Paint Color Guide
Heavy Metal Toxicity and Your Health

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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6 Reasons Why You Should Never Use VOC Paint Again

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The Planet Just Obliterated Another Heat Record

by HarrietGutierre Posted on March 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in The Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

February smashed a century of global temperature records by “stunning” margin, according to data released by NASA.

The unprecedented leap led scientists, usually wary of highlighting a single month’s temperature, to label the new record a “shocker” and warn of a “climate emergency.”

The NASA data shows the average global surface temperature in February was 2.43 degrees Fahrenheit (1.35 degrees Celsius) warmer than the average temperature for the month between 1951-1980, a far bigger margin than ever seen before. The previous record, set just one month earlier in January, was 2.07 degrees F (1.15 C) above the long-term average for that month.

“NASA dropped a bombshell of a climate report,” said Jeff Masters and Bob Henson, who analyzed the data on the Weather Underground website. “February dispensed with the one-month-old record by a full 0.21C 0.38 degrees F—an extraordinary margin to beat a monthly world temperature record by.”

“This result is a true shocker, and yet another reminder of the incessant long-term rise in global temperature resulting from human-produced greenhouse gases,” said Masters and Henson. “We are now hurtling at a frightening pace toward the globally agreed maximum of 2 C (3.6 F) warming over pre-industrial levels.”

The UN climate summit in Paris in December confirmed 3.6 degrees F (2 C) as the danger limit for global warming which should not be passed. But it also agreed to “pursue efforts” to limit warming to 2.7 degrees F (1.5 C), a target now looking highly optimistic.

Climate change is usually assessed over years and decades, and 2015 shattered the record set in 2014 for the hottest year seen, in data stretching back to 1850. The UK Met Office also expects 2016 to set a new record, meaning the global temperature record will have been broken for three years in a row.

One of the world’s three key temperature records is kept by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and its director Prof. Gavin Schmidt reacted to the February GISS temperature measurements with a simple “wow.” He tweeted:

“We are in a kind of climate emergency now,” said Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf, from the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research in Germany. He told Fairfax Media: “This is really quite stunning…It’s completely unprecedented.”

“This is a very worrying result,” said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, noting that each of the last five months globally have been hotter than any month preceding them.

“These results suggest that we may be even closer than we realized to breaching the 2 C limit. We have used up all of our room for maneuver. If we delay any longer strong cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, it looks like global mean surface temperature is likely to exceed the level beyond which the impacts of climate change are likely to be very dangerous.”

A major El Niño event, the biggest since 1998, is boosting global temperatures, but scientists are agreed that global warming driven by humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions is by far the largest factor in the astonishing run of temperature records.

Prof. Adam Scaife, at the UK Met Office, said the very low levels of Arctic ice were also helping to raise temperatures: “There has been record low ice in the Arctic for two months running and that releases a lot of heat.” He said the Met Office had forecast a record-breaking 2016 in December: “It is not as if you can’t see these things coming.”

Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading, UK, said: “It is a pretty big jump between January and February, although this data from NASA is only the first set of global temperature data. We will need to see what the figures from NOAA and the Met Office say. It is in line with our expectations that due to the continuing effect of greenhouse gas emissions, combined with the effects of El Niño on top, 2016 is likely to beat 2015 as the warmest year on record.”

The record for an annual increase of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, was also demolished in 2015.

Fossil fuel burning and the strong El Niño pushed CO2 levels up by 3.05 parts per million (ppm) to 402.6 ppm compared to 2014. “CO2 levels are increasing faster than they have in hundreds of thousands of years,” said Pieter Tans, lead scientist at NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network. “It’s explosive compared to natural processes.”

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The Planet Just Obliterated Another Heat Record

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Here are Big Oil’s favorite presidential candidates

by LucasBrune Posted on March 10, 2016

Here are Big Oil’s favorite presidential candidates

By on 10 Mar 2016commentsShare

Hillary Clinton is getting a ride on a roiling river of dirty fossil fuel money, but she’s not the biggest oil-industry recipient with presidential aspirations — not even close.

Oil and gas interests funneled $3.25 million into Priorities USA Action, the largest super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton, during this election cycle, according to new data from Federal Election Commission and compiled by Greenpeace. The funds make up one in every 15 dollars given to the PAC — a striking number for someone who once complained of being tired “of being at the mercy of these large oil companies.”

What’s more, Clinton is receiving fossil fuel funds directly into her campaign, as well. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, she’s received nearly $268,000 from PACs and individuals associated with the oil and gas sector.

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A spokesperson for Clinton told VICE News that she has “fought against fossil fuel interests for decades,” and the former secretary of state has repeatedly argued that her donors don’t hold sway over her decisions. Amid calls for her to release the transcripts of the speeches she gave to Goldman Sachs employees earlier this year, Clinton responded: “Anybody who knows me, who thinks they can influence me, name anything they’ve influenced me on. Just name one thing.”

But Clinton’s history isn’t quite that of a tireless campaigner against the interests of fossil fuel companies. While she surely understands climate science and supports Obama’s recent Clean Power Plan regulations, the Clinton Foundation, her family’s nonprofit, has a long record of accepting money from oil giants like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, as well as from oil-rich nations like Saudi Arabia.

Fossil fuel donations received by Clinton’s biggest Democratic adversary, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, pale in comparison. Sanders has received only $35,000 in campaign donations from fossil fuel interests this election cycle.But both Sanders and Clinton pale in comparison to the real oil money guzzler, Ted Cruz.

OpenSecrets.org

Throughout his simpering bid for the presidency, Cruz has been called many things: a troll, a jerk, and the zodiac killer. Now, the junior senator from Texas — who once boldly proclaimed, “Climate change is not science. It’s religion” — has officially earned the title of fossil fuel errand boy. Throughout the presidential race, super PACs supporting Cruz received more than $25 million from “megadonors,” or executives, board members, or major investors in the fossil fuel industry. In fact, more than half of the money given to the super PACs that support him — 57 percent — came from fossil fuel companies and stakeholders, according to that same data compiled by Greenpeace. And according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ numbers, Cruz’s own campaign received $887,451 from PACs and individuals associated with oil and gas. Personally, fossil fuel investments also make up 15.8 to 22.7 percent of Cruz’s own assets.

Simultaneously, Cruz has been doing everything he can to promise an easy road for Big Oil under a Cruz regime. This includes pushing to scale back restrictions on sending U.S. crude oil overseas, making public declarations of love for fracking, and reiterating his anti-science stance over and over again. But none of this should come as a surprise, given that, for years, Cruz has categorically denied the existence of climate change at every chance he can get. To hear Cruz talk about climate change is akin to hearing a Bigfoot hunter explain his latest simian sighting: his argument ignores science, rationale, and any semblance of sanity.

“If you line up the priorities of the hydrocarbons industry, they fit almost perfectly with Cruz’s positions,” Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston, told Bloomberg last month. “It’s a natural policy fit.”

Cruz’s hands are covered in oil, and he’s getting dangerously close to smearing them all over the walls of the White House.

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Guess How Much Trump Made off Trump University Last Year

by JuanHarkins94 Posted on March 9, 2016

Mother Jones

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GOP front-runner Donald Trump has been getting hammered by his rivals over Trump University (later named the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative). His embattled education venture is being sued for fraud by the New York state attorney general and by a handful of former students who allege they took on thousands of dollars in debt to attend real estate seminars that made false promises of future riches. (Trump promoted the company’s courses by saying they offered a better education than top business schools.) Trump has fought back—both against his Republican opponents and in court—insisting the company was on the up-and-up and beloved by students. During his victory speech on Tuesday night, following wins in the Michigan and Mississippi GOP primary elections, he vowed Trump University would come back, better and more successful than ever.

“If I become president that means Ivanka, Don, Eric and my family will start it up,” he said. “We have a lot of great people who want to get back into Trump University. It’s going to do very well, and it will continue to do very well.”

But how big a moneymaker was this school—supposedly designed to teach students to be successful in business—for its namesake?

As a presidential candidate, Trump only has to file disclosure forms revealing his income of the previous year, and Trump University started in 2005. So there’s no telling what he made from the venture in its first years—unless he releases his tax filings going back a decade. But the personal financial disclosure form he submitted last summer showed that he had earned a whopping $11,819 from the education company in the previous year.

That’s not too yooge, but it is sort of impressive. The school has been defunct since 2011.

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Guess How Much Trump Made off Trump University Last Year

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A drying Great Salt Lake spells trouble for Utah

by TiaZABcztkkghe Posted on March 5, 2016

Mud flats sit where water used to be next to the Great Salt Lake Marina. REUTERS/George Frey

A drying Great Salt Lake spells trouble for Utah

By on 5 Mar 2016 7:00 amcommentsShare

This story was originally published by CityLab and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Great Salt Lake is drying up, thanks to 150 years of human diversions from the rivers that feed it. That’s the takeaway of a white paper released by a team of Utah biologists and engineers. And if those diversions continue ramping up, as a bill working its way through the Utah legislature proposes, the waterbody may face a withering fate similar to other dried-up salt lakes around the world.

The namesake of Utah’s capital city, the Great Salt Lake is the the state’s defining geographic feature and one of its economic anchors. A 2012 report by the Great Salt Lake Council estimated that the total economic output of the waterbody at $1.32 billion, between mineral extraction from the lake, brine shrimp egg production (used in aquaculture all over the world), and recreation that takes place in and around it. It also serves as an essential migration flyway for millions of birds each year.

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But the lake, which approached record-low water levels last year, is under threat. According to the Utah researchers’ calculations, since the mid-19th century, consistent reductions from the rivers that feed the lake have caused the lake’s elevation to drop by 11 feet, lose roughly half its volume, increase the lake’s salinity, and expose approximately 50 percent of the lake bed.

Those numbers are unrelated to natural fluctuations over wet and dry periods, including the current drought. Since the lake is a closed basin, the only way water leaves it is through evaporation. That makes it fairly simple to calculate just how much water has been lost to agriculture and urban growth.

Utah State University

Currently, the Utah Senate is debating a bill that would fund a number of water infrastructure projects, including the controversial Bear River Development Project, which would dam and divert more water from one of the Great Salt Lake’s main feeds. Supporters of the project say it’s designed to support the state’s growing population and water consumption needs. But the researchers estimate that the project would lead to an additional 8.5 inch drop in the Great Salt Lake’s elevation, and another 30 square miles of exposed lake bed.

Not only does that spell trouble for the lake’s economic and ecological importance, a dried-up lake would ramp up dust storms in the Salt Lake City area, which already suffers some of the worst air pollution in the country. It doesn’t take much searching to find an example of how damaging such withered lakes are for the people around them. In nearby California, the researchers write:

Diversions from the Owens River for the city of Los Angeles desiccated Owens Lake by 1926, causing it to become one of the largest sources of particulate matter (PM10) pollution in the country. This dust affects about 40,000 permanent residents in the region, causing asthma and other health problems.

Lake Urmia in Iran and the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are other examples of how massive water diversions from closed basins for human uses can create environmental health disasters.

To meet the needs of a growing population, and to protect their future health, the researchers stress that Utah policymakers should focus on taking less water, not more, from the Great Salt Lake — especially when it comes to agriculture, which consumes the majority of all that diverted water. Like so many states throughout the arid American West, Utah has to weigh its future against a history of overdrawn resources.

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At Conservative Gathering, Attacks on Donald Trump Are Not Sticking

by euro9 Posted on March 4, 2016

Mother Jones

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Increasingly desperate in the face of Donald Trump’s growing lead in the Republican primary contest, his opponents have begun hurling attacks at him in a last-ditch effort to stop his rise. Marco Rubio is now calling Trump a “con artist” who started a “fake university” in order to trick people into taking out loans. Ted Cruz continues to hammer at Trump for having previously been pro-choice and progressive on other issues before he decided to run for president. Mitt Romney lashed out at him on Thursday as “a phony, a fraud.” A new super-PAC dedicated to defeating Trump released an ad this week hitting the front-runner for the Trump University scam.

But attendees of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, just outside Washington, DC, say these attacks are one scam they are not going to fall for.

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At Conservative Gathering, Attacks on Donald Trump Are Not Sticking

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MIT’s long-running divestment sit-in ends, but the fight isn’t over

by lillye6553 Posted on March 3, 2016

MIT’s long-running divestment sit-in ends, but the fight isn’t over

By on 3 Mar 2016commentsShare

After 116 days of a rotating cast of 100 students, alumni, and faculty slouching in the corridor of the university’s administrative offices, the fossil fuel divestment sit-in at Massachusetts Institute of Technology has finally come to an end.

In what became the longest ever sit-in of its kind, student activists from the group Fossil Free MIT announced the end of the protest alongside MIT’s Vice President for Research Maria Zuber on Thursday. The activists had demanded that the university cut fossil fuel holdings out of its $13.5 billion endowment, a call that was endorsed by 93 faculty members.

MIT isn’t out of the fossil fuel forest just yet — it didn’t agree to students’ demands to fully divest from oil and gas companies. According to the agreed-upon plan, the university will instead work towards “campus carbon neutrality as soon as possible,” establish a committee to oversee climate action, and host a forum to address climate change and the ethics of fossil fuel investment. Working with students, the university said it will develop benchmarks for tracking the progress of the school’s action on climate, and publish an annual report detailing its developments.

PhD student and divestment activist Ben Scandella criticized the tech-focused approach of the plan, which he said was due to the very nature of MIT. As a techno-centric university, “we assume technology is the solution to all problems,” he said. “The climate action plan is centered on technological solutions, like better solar cells — but this ignores the social and political aspects of the problem.”

The conflict over divestment at MIT has been going on for years, with some pointing to a potential issue in the looming presence of billionaire David Koch, a climate change skeptic who made his fortune at the helm of the chemical and oil corporation Koch Industries. Koch is a lifetime trustee of MIT and a major donor who built three of the school’s buildings, and also serves as director and executive vice president of the Board of the MIT Corporation, which owns and governs the university.

Koch built his fortune on the fossil fuel industry, and his board membership in other organizations has been a target for climate activists. Last October, when MIT initially refused to divest, climate campaigner and author Bill McKibben said it was “sad to see MIT cave before the power of the Kochs.”

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Is Europe totally unfrackable?

by CollettePenman Posted on March 2, 2016

Is Europe totally unfrackable?

By on 2 Mar 2016commentsShare

The European Union is desperate for a good fracking. It’s had to watch the U.S. drill its way to a natural gas boom in recent years and is now looking itself in the mirror and asking: “What does old Crazypants McFatty have that I don’t?”

Well, E.U. — we hate to brag (no we don’t), but it looks like we’re simply better endowed. According to Nature, after playing — or rather, testing — the field for several years now, Europe has yet to nail down a commercial shale-gas well. The International Energy Agency, BP, and ExxonMobil have all expressed doubt about the region’s shale prospects, and at the World Gas Conference in Paris last year, one manager from the French oil and gas company Total conceded: “we are very, very far in Europe from profitability.”

Unfortunately for our friends overseas, Europe might need natural gas in order to meet energy demands while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The United Kingdom, for example, plans to eliminate all coal-fired power plants without carbon capture and storage systems by 2025, and politicians are wary that solar, wind, and nuclear power alone will be able to compensate for the loss. Which means that, while the nation already relies on foreign imports for about half of its current gas needs, it might rely on imports for as much as 75 percent of those needs by 2030, according to U.K. energy secretary Amber Rudd.

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But as much as Europe would like to reduce its reliance on foreign gas (which mostly comes from Russia), it can only do so much when the problem is one of logistics.

In order for a country to have a successful fracking industry, it has to a) have lots of gas, b) know that it has lots of gas, and c) be able to extract said gas — safely. And according to Nature, scientists simply don’t know as much about Europe’s shale deposits as the U.S.’s, because Europe has done less onshore drilling. And even the deposits that they do know about seem to pose challenges:

The United States has large deposits of shale that are not too thick and have been folded little over time. The shale in the United Kingdom is more complicated, says petroleum geoscientist Andrew Aplin of the University of Durham, UK. “It’s been screwed around with more”, creating more folds and faults.

That greater complexity could pose challenges. One risk is that pumping fluid into rock can trigger earthquakes if the wells are near faults or large natural fractures. “It’s better to stay away from them, especially when they’re located near densely populated areas,” says natural-gas expert Rene Peters of the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) in the Hague. But there has been relatively little high-resolution seismic imaging in Europe, he says, so “not all these fractures are known.”

About a decade ago, Nature reports, Poland was looking to take the lead in Europe’s shale boom, handing out exploration licenses to ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Total. And in 2011, the D.C.-based consultancy Advanced Resources International (ARI) set the country’s hopes even higher by estimating that it had about 5,295 billion cubic meters of recoverable gas — enough to meet 325 years’ worth of Poland’s gas consumption.

But the following year, the Polish Geological Institute (PGI) estimated that the actual amount of gas available was just one-tenth of what ARI had estimated. And by the end of last year, only 25 of the 72 wells drilled in Poland were fracked, and overall they yielded only between one-tenth and one-third of the rate necessary to be profitable, according to Nature.

Some of Poland’s problems were purely geological: The deposits were deeper than those in the U.S.; greater concentrations of clay made the rocks difficult to drill through; a “geological barrier” prevented full access to one of the largest deposits near the Baltic Sea. As one PGI spokesperson told Nature, the prospects for Poland’s shale industry were “enthusiastic, but geologically unrealistic.”

Still, not all are deterred:

England is home to some of the few remaining attempts to tap shale gas in Europe. A handful of companies have applied for permission to drill, which could finally reveal whether the United Kingdom’s shale deposits will be a jackpot or a dud. But environmentalists have put up a strong fight, and permissions have been slow to emerge.

Just remember, England — if you do score big, use protection. As we’ve learned the hard way here in the States, fracking can come with some nasty side effects, including leakage and a bad case of the shakes. But as long as you’re careful, then drill, baby, drill!

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Is Europe totally unfrackable?

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, ONA, PUR, Radius, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Is Europe totally unfrackable?

Donald Trump Celebrated Elton John’s Same-Sex Marriage in 2005

by LieselotteFisher Posted on March 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump’s leap to the front of the Republican presidential pack has been fueled by consistent support among self-described evangelical voters, and as a candidate, he is on record as opposing same-sex marriage. As the Human Rights Campaign puts it:

Trump has been a consistent opponent of marriage equality. He said that he opposed it because he was a “traditional” guy, choosing to support domestic partnership benefits instead. Trump later reversed himself and said he also opposed civil unions. Despite a brief flirtation with “evolving” in 2013, Trump has consistently maintained his opposition to marriage equality, sometimes by citing polling and making an analogy to his dislike of long golf putters. After the Supreme Court ruling, Trump said the court had made its decision and, although he disagreed with the ruling, he did not support a constitutional amendment that would allow states to re-ban marriage equality. He later said he would appoint Supreme Court judges who would be committed to overturning the ruling.

But once upon a time, Trump was in favor of same-sex marriage—at least one such marriage. That was when Elton John wedded his longtime partner David Furnish.

In December 2005, Trump wrote a blog post on the website of his now-defunct Trump University, and it was one big wet kiss to Elton and his groom, declaring their marriage a holiday-season happening to celebrate. Here is the full post:

There’s a lot to celebrate this holiday season. Elton John married his long-time partner David Furnish on December 21. That’s the first day that civil partnerships between gay couples became legal in England under the new Civil Partnership Act.

Elton credits David with helping him kick drug and alcohol addictions that nearly killed him. The pair has been together for 12 years. I know both of them and they get along wonderfully. It’s a marriage that’s going to work.

Elton made the ceremony a small private affair involving only his and David’s parents as witnesses. The couple just didn’t want to make a big deal out of the wedding. They really wanted to keep things low key.

By all accounts, Elton and David had every tabloid and every entertainment magazine knocking at their door begging for exclusive rights to the affair. By some news reports, the couple turned down an offer of $11 million to record their wedding for British television. But Elton said, “Our relationship isn’t up for grabs. It doesn’t come with a price tag.”

In any event, I’m very happy for them. If two people dig each other, they dig each other. Good luck, Elton. Good luck, David. Have a great life.

(But because I wasn’t invited, do I still have to send them a toaster?)

Those are hardly the words of a man sincerely opposed to same-sex marriage. Has Trump evolved in the reverse direction? In January, Trump said that if elected president he would “strongly consider” appointing Supreme Court justices who would overturn the court’s ruling legalizing gay marriage.

Meanwhile, Elton John also appears to have to forgotten Trump’s well-wishes for his wedding. Last month, he told Trump to stop using his songs at campaign rallies.

A screenshot of the blog post

Link: 

Donald Trump Celebrated Elton John’s Same-Sex Marriage in 2005

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Donald Trump Celebrated Elton John’s Same-Sex Marriage in 2005