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POPS12 Ways to Build with a Smaller Carbon Footprint Buildings consume 76% of electricity generated & they create 48% of our greenhouse gases. Main Points: * Every brick in building required the burning of fossil fuel in its manufacture, every piece of lumber was cut and transported using energy * Aim for a complete ban of formaldehyde use in building products * Building demolitions account for 48% of the waste stream (65 million tons a year), renovations account for 44% and renovations account for 8% * A solar water heater can save $ 450 a year and keep a ton of CO2 emissions out of the air; multiply that by 80 million houses in the USA * While smaller is better almost every city has minimum floor area requirements * The losses are higher in AC than in DC because it grounds so easily * The average 1950’s house was 983 sq feet; by 1970 it was 1500 SF; last year it was 2350 SF * We can no longer afford to lose agricultural land close to our cities and towns
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POPSDancing through the "o" in God! Outer world is also tree root and river rock, anthill and cloud. At some point the distinction between inner world and outer world itself dissolves. Years ago I worked with a dance teacher who took us outside to dance under the sky, and we discovered that dancing outside is a special ecstasy, to dance in and with nature. One night she invited us to dance through the o in God. Another night she said we usually assume the soul is a tiny element somewhere inside the body, a bright light in the mind or in the heart. What if the soul is big, bigger than the body, and the body rests inside the soul? As we dance through space, extending feet, hands, elbows, ribs, we are brushing up against our soul, moving in an energetic circle that is our soul. The body inside the soul! Everything turns inside out. The soul becomes as immense as the sky. Dancing with each other, we are moving together in this soulful air.
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POPSThe Mountain That Lost Its Top
The devastation being wrought on Appalachia is best appreciated from the air. An organisation called Southwinds offers people an eagle-eye view of the carnage, not readily appreciated from the road. Another way to see what’s going on behind the ridge-line is to take a Google Earth virtual tour of an online memorial to the 470 mountains blown up and levelled in recent years. The act of destroying a million-year-old mountain has several distinct stages. First it is earmarked for removal and the hardwood forest cover, containing over 500 species of tree per acre in this region, is bulldozed away. The trees are typically burnt rather than logged, because mining companies are not in the lumber business. Then topsoil is scraped away and high explosives laid in the sandstone. Thousands of blasts go off across the region every day, blowing up what the mining industry calls “overburden”. The rubble is then tipped into the valleys - more than 7,000 have already been filled - and more than
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POPS24 hours in pictures - April ist 04 Dhaka, Bangladesh: A man checks his money as he waits in a queue to buy rice at a shop that offers fair prices. Rice prices in Asia have been steadily rising in the last month. 07 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: A boy with symptoms of dengue fever looks through netting at a Brazilian air force field hospital. A dengue epidemic has claimed at least 58 lives in the area since January 10 Prague, Czech Republic: Slavia Prague fans protect themselves against tear gas fired by riot police after clashes during their derby match against Sparta Prague 13 Poolesville, USA: A carpenter sands the pulpit that will be used by Pope Benedict XVI during his upcoming visit to Washington.
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POPS Little Net Global Warming In The Past 70 Years
Derived from a large number of tree-ring density chronologies obtained from some 400 sites in the western United States, Canada, Europe, Fennoscandia and northern Siberia, this temperature record shows a dramatic departure from the instrumental temperature record over the last 70 years, with the instrumental record depicting dramatic 20th century warming, but with the tree-ring record showing nothing of the sort. It is very likely, therefore, that enhanced tree growth induced by the historical rise in the air's CO2 content - possibly augmented by enhanced nitrogen deposition (Idso, 1995) - has been increasing the growth rates of trees all around the world for over a century or more , Furthermore, this growth enhancement has been accelerating over time (Phillips and Gentry); and it is this ever-intensifying biological phenomenon that some are using to bolster their claim that the earth is warming at an ever-increasing rate, when such may not really be the case.
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POPS360 degrees virtual Panoramas from around the World and the Moon surface (did NASA actually went there? haha.. do you know the meaning of mass hypnosis?) from the 6 Apollo missions. This 360 degrees panoramic views though really gives the feeling of being there..
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POPSThe Alien Grey It is just plain evil that they are going after the poor things so rabidly, it's sad. This SOS Charity only protects red squirrels. The Save Our Squirrels charity says the Government should pay for culls of greys in areas near red populations. "What kind of country are we when an endangered species has to rely on handouts for its survival?" asks Carri Nicholson, its project manager.
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POPSChinese Climate Records::100 AD ' Was Warmer Then' The Chinese researchers also looked at modern proxy evidence of past temperatures. * The oxygen isotopes in ice cores yield an annual record of the air temperatures when the ice was laid down. The researchers looked at two ice cores from Tibet. * Trees respond to warmth and rainfall by growing more rapidly, and the Chinese researchers examined two tree ring records from China and one from nearby Japan. * They included analysis of pollen and organic matter in a deep peat bog on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau. * They examined sediment cores from two lake beds in Taiwan. From this evidence, the Chinese researchers concluded China's warmest period during the past 2000 years occurred around 100 AD. This aligns with Roman records of growing wine grapes in Britain during their occupation of that island in the first century--even though Britain was unable to grow wine grapes from 1300 to 1950 because of too-cold temperatures
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POPSUltimate Rock, Paper, Scissors Rock, Paper, Scissors is too easy and simple for your complex and thrill-seeking being? Try ULTIMATE Rock, Paper, Scissors with more fun things to do. Use a Nuke, Lightning, the Devil, Air, a Dragon, a Tree or even Woman and Man. Have fun!
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POPSEat what you know I'm so excited about this book coming out next month. The author and her family decide to eat only local produce, dairy and meat for one year (with a few exceptions). She wanted a greater connection to her sustanence, as well as a way to cut down on fossil fuel consumption. I really look forward to teaching my daughter about this concept. Food isn't really made by magic by elves in a tree. Someone put their back into it. Someone worried about rainfall. Someone put their sweat, tears and love into each bite she eats. My parents have a garden every year, and this year she is old enough to really help. Doesn't a tomato taste better when you've grown it yourself? I certainly appreciate every lemon I manage to coax from my little tree, in a way I don't seem to care about storebought lemons.
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POPSA Levitating Arrow Rest Talking about how long it took to perfect this: "Someone a long time ago realized that you could store energy in a curved limb of a tree and launch a projectile," he says. "Five thousand years later, it's neat to be a part of its improvement."
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POPSTree trade could save planet from global warming If this finding is true, I would pay significant money (voluntary tax?) that would pay people and / or countries not to cut down their forests, as well as to restore and regenerate what they have cut down. If every comfortable middle class family in the world paid $1000 a year into a fund to save the forests, at LOT of money could be generated. And we could then fly to our heart's content ... except that rising fuel costs are going to put air travel out of financial reach for most people. It's a double bonus for the environment, though.
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POPSForemost expert in climatology debunks "global warming" hysteria This guy says the global warming hysteria is nonsense: Reid A. Bryson holds the 30th PhD in Meteorology granted in the history of American education. Emeritus Professor and founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin Department of Meteorology—now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences—in the 1970s he became the first director of what’s now the UW’s Gaylord Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies. He’s a member of the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor—created, the U.N. says, to recognize “outstanding achievements in the protection and improvement of the environment.” He has authored five books and more than 230 other publications and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world.
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