<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss" xmlns:geo="http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>Science &#38; SpaceCategory: Ecocentric &#124; Science &#38; Space &#124; TIME.com</title>
	<atom:link href="http://science.time.com/category/ecocentric/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://science.time.com</link>
	<description></description>
	<lastBuildDate>Fri, 17 May 2013 11:14:36 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en</language>
	<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
	<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	<generator>http://wordpress.com/</generator>
<cloud domain='science.time.com' port='80' path='/?rsscloud=notify' registerProcedure='' protocol='http-post' />
<image>
		<url>http://1.gravatar.com/blavatar/30539656114572ca1035ade0e9e39552?s=96&#038;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.png</url>
		<title>Science &#38; SpaceCategory: Ecocentric &#124; Science &#38; Space &#124; TIME.com</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com</link>
	</image>
	<atom:link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" href="http://science.time.com/osd.xml" title="Science &#38; Space" />
	<atom:link rel='hub' href='http://science.time.com/?pushpress=hub'/>
		<item>
		<title>Why Warming Oceans Could Mean Dwindling Fish</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/16/why-warming-oceans-could-mean-dwindling-fish/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/16/why-warming-oceans-could-mean-dwindling-fish/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2013 09:45:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oceans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fish]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fishing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[global warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oceans]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15272</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It’s easy to forget that global warming doesn’t just refer to the rising temperature of the air. Climate change is having an enormous, if less understood, impact on the oceans, which already absorb far more carbon dioxide than the atmosphere. Like so much of what goes on in the vast depths that cover more than two-thirds of our planet’s surface, the effect of climate change on the oceans remains a black box, albeit one that scientists are working to illuminate. Here’s one way: fisheries. Wild fish remain a major source of protein for humanity — as well as a major source of reality-TV shows — and for some coastal communities, fish mean even more. Scientists aren’t clear about what effect climate change, including the warming of the oceans, will have on wild fisheries. As Mark Payne of the National Institute of Aquatic Resources writes in a new piece in Nature, ocean researchers “tend to view climate change as a dark cloud on the horizon: potentially problematic in the future, but not of immediate concern” — especially compared with the much more pressing threat of simple overfishing. But now a new study in Nature makes the case that climate change — including the warming of the oceans — is already having a direct impact on global fisheries. Researchers led by William Cheung at the University of British Columbia’s Fisheries Centre created a new model that took the known temperature preferences of different species of commercial fish and compared those figures with catch numbers from around the world. They found that species comfortable in warmer waters have been replacing fish that are more accustomed to cool temperatures. That means climate change is altering the makeup of fisheries around the world — and that could be particularly bad for the tropics, which may eventually become too hot for even for fish that tend to prefer it on the warmer side. As Cheung’s co-author Daniel Pauly put it in a statement: We’ve been talking about climate change as if it’s something that’s going to<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15272&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/05/16/why-warming-oceans-could-mean-dwindling-fish/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Oceans</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/oceans/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/166638083.jpeg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/166638083.jpeg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/166638083.jpeg?w=240" medium="image" />

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>The IEA Says Peak Oil Is Dead. That&#8217;s Bad News for Climate Policy</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/15/the-iea-says-peak-oil-is-dead-thats-bad-news-for-climate-policy/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/15/the-iea-says-peak-oil-is-dead-thats-bad-news-for-climate-policy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2013 09:45:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oil]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[extreme energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IEA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oil]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[peak oil]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15240</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[No one—aside maybe from survivalists who&#8217;d stocked up on MREs and assault rifles—was really looking forward to a peak-oil world. Read this 2007 GQ piece by Benjamin Kunkel—while we&#8217;re discussing topics from the mid-2000s—that imagines what a world without oil would really be like. Think uncomfortable and violent. Oil is in nearly every modern product we use, and it&#8217;s still what gets us from point A to point B—especially if you need to get from A to B in a plane. If we were really to see the global oil supply peak and decline sharply, even as demand continued to go up, well, apocalyptic might not be too large a word. And for several years in the middle of the last decade, as oil prices climbed past $100 a barrel and analysts were betting it would break $200, that scenario seemed entirely plausible. But there was an upside to peak oil. Crude oil was responsible for a significant chunk of global carbon emissions, second only to coal. Only the shock of being severed from the main fuel of modernity would be enough to make us get serious about tackling climate change and shifting to an economy powered by renewable energy and efficiency. We&#8217;d have to because we&#8217;d have no other choice, save a future that might look something like Mad Max. We&#8217;d lose oil but save the world. Increasingly, though, that doesn&#8217;t seem likely to happen. New oil sources, many of them unlocked by new technology—the Canadian oil sands, tight oil in North Dakota and Texas, ultra-deepwater oil in the Atlantic—has helped keep the supply of oil growing, even as greater efficiency measures and other social shifts have helped blunt demand in rich countries like the U.S. Oil isn&#8217;t likely to be cheap—a barrel of Brent crude is $102—and getting it out of the ground isn&#8217;t going to get any easier. But it&#8217;s increasingly likely that we will have more than enough oil in the future to keep the global economy growing and stave off any Mel Gibson-esque apocalypses. Indeed, a new assessment released<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15240&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/05/15/the-iea-says-peak-oil-is-dead-thats-bad-news-for-climate-policy/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Oil</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/energy/oil/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/166074732.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/166074732.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/166074732.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Suncor base plant, in the Athabasca Oil Sands, near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, on March 26, 2013.</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Why a Hotter World Will Mean More Extinctions</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/13/why-a-hotter-world-will-mean-more-extinctions/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/13/why-a-hotter-world-will-mean-more-extinctions/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 13 May 2013 09:45:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Animals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Endangered Species]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[animals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[endangered species]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[extinction]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15191</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The end of last week saw the carbon concentrations in the atmosphere finally pass the 400-part-per-million threshold. That means carbon levels are higher now than they&#8217;ve been for at least 800,000 years, and most likely far longer. There&#8217;s nothing special per se about 400 parts per million — other than giving all of us a change to note it in article like this one — but it&#8217;s a reminder that we are headed very fast into a very uncertain future. Parts per million and global temperature change, though, are just numbers. What matters is the effect they will have on life — ours, of course, but also everything else that lives on the planet earth. I&#8217;ve written before that while I certainly worry and fear the impact that unchecked climate change will have on humanity, I also feel relatively — relatively — confident that we will, in some ways, muddle through. Human beings have already proved that they are extremely adaptable, living — with various degrees of success — from the hottest desert to the coldest corner of the Arctic. I don&#8217;t think a future where temperatures are 4˚F or 5˚F or 6˚F warmer on average will be an optimal one for humanity, to say the least. But I don&#8217;t think it will be the end of our species either. (I&#8217;ve always favored asteroids for that.) (PHOTOS: Up in the Air: Celebrate World Migratory Bird Day) But the plants and animals that share this planet with us are a different story. Even before climate change has really kicked in, human expansion had led to the destruction of habitat on land and in the sea, as we crowd out other species. By some estimates we&#8217;re already in the midst of the sixth great extinction wave, one that&#8217;s largely human caused, with extinction rates that are 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the background rate of species loss. So what will happen to those plants and animals if and when the climate really starts warming? According to a new study in Nature Climate Change, the answer is pretty simple: they will run out of habitable space, and many of them will die.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15191&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/05/13/why-a-hotter-world-will-mean-more-extinctions/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Endangered Species</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/animals-2/endangered-species/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/138343068.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/138343068.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/138343068.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Polar Bear</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.wordpress.com/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/wordpress/img/trans.gif" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">More...</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Studies of the Past Show an Ice-Free Arctic Could Be in Our Future [UPDATE]</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/10/studies-of-the-past-show-an-ice-free-arctic-could-be-in-our-future/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/10/studies-of-the-past-show-an-ice-free-arctic-could-be-in-our-future/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 10 May 2013 09:45:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Climate Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arctic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate past]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CO2]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Keeling Curve]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15169</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[UPDATE 5/10/13 10:30 AM: And so the threshold has been passed—at least according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The agency reported that the daily average of carbon concentration levels at the Mauna Loa observatory on May 9 was 400.3 ppm—as far as I know, the first time carbon has passed the 400 ppm mark since well before modern humans were making a mark on the planet. It&#8217;s all new from here on in. As I wrote last week, the carbon concentration in the Earth&#8217;s atmosphere is nearing 400 parts per million (ppm). (399.71 ppm right now, according to the Scripps readings Mauna Loa.) The last time carbon levels in the atmosphere were that high was at least 800,000 years ago, and quite possibly much, much longer. What we do know is that the climate was much warmer—up to 11 F warmer on average—and very, very different than the one we&#8217;ve lived in rather successfully for thousands of years. Just how different the climate was is underscored by a new study published in the May 9 Science. Researchers at American, Russian and German universities traveled in the winter of 2009 to the ice-covered Lake El&#8217;gygytgyn in far northeastern Russia, more than 50 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The lake was formed some 3.6 million years ago when a massive meteorite struck the Earth&#8217;s surface, gauging out a deep crater. Sediment collected in the crater over time, which has made the lake a gold mine for geoscientists, who are able to analyze the past climate of the surrounding area through the rock record. (MORE: Exclusive: Timelapse Satellite Videos Show Decades of Drastic Changes on Earth) The scientists took core samples of the sediment—records in rock of the past that go back millions of years ago. And their findings suggest that the Arctic was very warm between 3.6 and 2.2 million years ago, during the middle Pliocene and Early Pleistocene epochs. So warm in fact—with balmy summer temperatures in the between 59 and 61 F, more than 14 F warmer than they<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15169&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/05/10/studies-of-the-past-show-an-ice-free-arctic-could-be-in-our-future/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Climate Science</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/climate-science/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/brigham5hr.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/brigham5hr.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/brigham5hr.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">brigham5HR</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Get the Lead Out: Why the Best Way to Improve Health in Poor Countries Is to Clean Up Industrial Pollution</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/08/get-the-lead-out-why-the-best-way-to-improve-health-in-poor-countries-is-to-clean-up-industrial-pollution/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/08/get-the-lead-out-why-the-best-way-to-improve-health-in-poor-countries-is-to-clean-up-industrial-pollution/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 08 May 2013 09:45:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pollution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blacksmith]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blacksmith Institute]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[developing countries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[industrial waste]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lead contamination]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pollution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[poverty]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15110</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Most of the attention on global environmental issues goes to climate change, and not without reason. The carbon dioxide we&#8217;re adding to the atmosphere — where carbon-concentration levels have almost passed the 400-ppm threshold — is already changing the climate for the worse and will likely screw us over in the future in ways that we can&#8217;t even imagine. But there are far more pressing environmental threats for the average person in a poor country — threats that directly impact human health and well-being in the hear and now. Take lead, a known neurotoxin. High lead exposure in small children has been linked to a whole mess of complications later in life, including lower IQ, hyperactivity, behavioral problems and learning disabilities. Overwhelmingly a disorder of the poor — who live in the crowded urban tenements and near toxic industrial sites where lead exposure is too common — lead contamination can alter the course of entire lives and maybe even change the fabric of societies, all for the worse. In the postwar era, lead contamination was common even in a rich country like the U.S., thanks largely to the widespread use of leaded gasoline, which wasn&#8217;t phased out until the  1970s, as well as lead paint and lead in soil. Once that happened, lead contamination plummeted—blood lead levels among children 5 years and younger dropped from 16.5 micrograms per deciliter between 1976 and 1980 to just 3.6 micrograms per deciliter between 1992 and 1994. As Kevin Drum of Mother Jones argued in a great piece earlier this year, getting lead out of the environment might have been one of the most important public-health actions the U.S. has ever taken. Toddlers who ingested high levels of lead in the 1940s and ’50s were more likely to become violent criminals as adults in the 1970s and ’80s — and when they were replaced in the 1990s by young people who had never been exposed to such high levels of lead, violent crime rapidly waned. All because of one molecule. Other countries — and the children who live<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15110&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/05/08/get-the-lead-out-why-the-best-way-to-improve-health-in-poor-countries-is-to-clean-up-industrial-pollution/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Pollution</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/pollution-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/150952255-jpeg.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/150952255-jpeg.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/150952255-jpeg.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">A view of the Doe Run Metallurgical Plant which processes metals like gold and silver, in Oroya, Peru, on July 28, 2008.</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Beepocalypse Redux: Honeybees Are Still Dying — and We Still Don&#8217;t Know Why</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/07/beepocalypse-redux-honey-bees-are-still-dying-and-we-still-dont-know-why/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/07/beepocalypse-redux-honey-bees-are-still-dying-and-we-still-dont-know-why/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 May 2013 09:45:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Going Green]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bees]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CCD]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chemical regulation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[collapse disorder]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[colony]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Europe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[honey bees]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pesticides]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15091</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The honeybees are dying — and we don&#8217;t really know why. That&#8217;s the conclusion of a massive Department of Agriculture (USDA) report that came out late last week on colony-collapse disorder (CCD), the catchall term for the large-scale deaths of honeybee groups throughout the U.S. And given how important honeybees are to the food that we eat — bees help pollinate crops that are worth more than $200 billion a year — the fact that they are dying in large numbers, and we can&#8217;t say why, is very, very worrying. CCD was first reported in 2006, when commercial beekeepers began noticing that their adult worker honeybees would suddenly flee the hive, ending up dead somewhere else and leading to the rapid loss of the colony. On normal years, commercial beekeepers might expect to lose 10% to 15% of their colony, but over the past five years, mortality rates for commercial operations in the U.S. have ranged from 28% to 33%. Since 2006 an estimated 10 million beehives worth about $200 each have been lost, costing beekeepers some $2 billion. There are now 2.5 million honeybee colonies in the U.S., down from 6 million 60 years ago. And if CCD continues, the consequences for the agricultural economy — and even for our ability to feed ourselves — could be dire. &#8220;Currently, the survivorship of honeybee colonies is too low for us to be confident in our ability to meet the pollination demands of U.S. agricultural crops,&#8221; the USDA report said. So what&#8217;s causing CCD — and how can we stop it? (MORE: What’s the Buzz: Study Links Pesticide With Honeybee Collapse) The problem is that there doesn&#8217;t seem to be a single smoking gun behind CCD. The USDA report points at a range of possible causes, including: A parasitic mite called Varroa destructor that has often been found in decimated colonies Several viruses A bacterial disease called European foulbrood that is increasingly being detected in U.S. bee colonies The use of pesticides, including neonicotinoids, a neuroactive chemical Since CCD isn&#8217;t so much a<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15091&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/05/07/beepocalypse-redux-honey-bees-are-still-dying-and-we-still-dont-know-why/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Food</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/food/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/73906961-jpeg.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/73906961-jpeg.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/73906961-jpeg.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">73906961.jpeg</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Energy Independence and Other Myths: A Q&amp;A With Michael Levi, Author of The Power Surge</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/06/energy-independence-and-other-myths-a-qa-with-michael-levi-author-of-power-surge/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/06/energy-independence-and-other-myths-a-qa-with-michael-levi-author-of-power-surge/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 May 2013 09:45:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15064</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Michael Levi is my favorite energy wonk — and not just because we both had to endure waiting for hours in the cold outside the 2009 U.N. climate-change conference in Copenhagen. (Though he got in first.) Levi, the senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, is a smart, pragmatic observer of the energy wars — and he&#8217;s an excellent blogger. He knows how to cut through specious arguments on both sides of the energy-and-climate debate while keeping in target the bigger challenges facing the U.S. and the world. Levi has a new book out on the energy debate called The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity and the Battle for America&#8217;s Future. It&#8217;s one of the best analyses of the amazing changes taking place in the energy sphere today, touching on everything from fracking to climate change to the Keystone XL pipeline debate. I had a chance to talk with him about Canadian oil sands, the myth of energy independence and why we need a negotiated peace settlement to end the energy wars. We’ve seen other energy revolutions go through a boom and bust cycle. What makes this moment different? Two things make this moment special. The first is the diversity of changes that are happening. This isn&#8217;t just one isolated area. Today you&#8217;ve got booming production of oil, natural gas. You have oil consumption, rapidly falling, rising renewable energy. It&#8217;s not just one boom, it&#8217;s several at the same time. The other thing is that there are multiple forces driving the change. In oil it’s not just fracking, it&#8217;s expanded offshore drilling. In renewables, it&#8217;s not just one technology. It&#8217;s wind, it&#8217;s solar, both centralized and distributed. On the car front, it is everything from better traditional engines to electric vehicles and natural gas for long-distance trucking. So when you have multiple trends and drivers, the transformation is more robust. (MORE: State Dept: Build the Keystone Pipeline or Not, the Oil-Sands Crude Will Flow) Your point is that the best future for America is to capitalize<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15064&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/05/06/energy-independence-and-other-myths-a-qa-with-michael-levi-author-of-power-surge/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Energy</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/energy/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/166895133.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/166895133.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/166895133.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Aerial View of the Desert Sunlight Solar Farm under construction in the Mojave Desert, that will use approximately 8.8 million cadmium telluride thin-film solar photovoltaic modules made by First Solar, on April 5, 2013.</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>California Kindling: A Dry Winter and Reduced Snowpack Means Wildfires for the Golden State</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/03/california-kindling-a-dry-winter-and-reduce-snowpack-means-fires-for-the-golden-state/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/03/california-kindling-a-dry-winter-and-reduce-snowpack-means-fires-for-the-golden-state/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 03 May 2013 18:12:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Water]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[drought]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[global warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[snowpack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wildfire]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15042</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Wildfires are just a part of life in Southern California, like earthquakes or glimpsing Adam Sandler shopping at the Santa Monica Place mall. (OK, that one just happened to me yesterday.) But what&#8217;s not normal is a wildfire season that begins at the start of May, when kids are still at school and temperatures should just be warming up. Yet that&#8217;s exactly what&#8217;s happening now northwest of Los Angeles, where an unusually early wildfire has already forced thousands of residents to flee and threatened the Naval Base Ventura County. From USA Today: More than 10,000 acres of rugged, brush-covered terrain have been burned by the fire that began during the morning rush hour near the major highway and commuter route into Los Angeles&#8217; San Fernando Valley on Thursday. Thousands of people have fled the area as the wildfire, which has damaged 15 homes, threatened 2,000 more and 100 businesses in its race toward Malibu. The hope is that the gusting winds that have stoked the fires will begin to taper off on Friday, and cooler temperatures could halt the progression of the flames. But regardless, chances are that this week&#8217;s wildfires may just be a rehearsal for what could be a long, hot summer. California is primed to burn. (Photos: Wildfires Ravage California Coast) That&#8217;s due in part to the fact that an unusually dry winter and spring has left California&#8217;s vital snowpack at just 17% of normal levels as of the beginning of May. The melting snows of the Sierra Nevada mountains have long fed both farmers and city dwellers in California, a state that usually doesn&#8217;t get a lot of precipitation on its own. Think of the snows as a natural reservoir that&#8217;s opened each spring—only this year, the reservoir is almost empty. As Frank Gehrke, the chief surveyor of the state&#8217;s Department of Water Resources, told the AP: I&#8217;m finding nothing. Seriously, there is no snow on the course at all. Right now it&#8217;s not officially a drought, but the state is still projecting that it will<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15042&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/05/03/california-kindling-a-dry-winter-and-reduce-snowpack-means-fires-for-the-golden-state/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Water</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/water-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/167940028.jpeg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/167940028.jpeg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/167940028.jpeg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">167940028</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Greenhouse Effect: CO2 Concentrations Set to Hit Record High of 400 PPM</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/02/greenhouse-effect-co2-concentrations-set-to-hit-record-high/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/02/greenhouse-effect-co2-concentrations-set-to-hit-record-high/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 02 May 2013 09:45:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Climate Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[carbon dioxide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[carbon emissions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Charles David Keeling]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[global warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[greenhouse effect]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Keeling Curve]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mauna Loa]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=14991</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Climate change is, first and foremost, a consequence of the addition of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We emit carbon dioxide, through burning fossil fuels or forests, and some of that carbon stays in the atmosphere, intensifying the heat-trapping greenhouse effect and warming the climate. What kind of global warming we&#8217;ll see in the future will largely be due to how much carbon dioxide—and to a lesser extent, other greenhouse gases like methane—we add to the atmosphere. And to fully understand the future, we need to understand the present and the past, and track the concentration of CO2 in the Earth&#8217;s atmosphere. The fact that we can and have been tracking that very important number is due largely to the efforts of the geochemist Charles David Keeling. As a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology in the 1950s, Keeling developed the first instrument that could accurately measure the CO2 levels in the entire atmosphere through sampling. When he got to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography a few years later, Keeling began taking regularly CO2 measurements at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Keeling discovered that atmospheric CO2 underwent a seasonal cycle, as plants bloomed and decayed in the Northern Hemisphere, and more importantly, that CO2 was rising fast. In 1958, CO2 levels recorded at Mauna Loa were about 316 parts per million (ppm). By 2005, when Keeling died—and his son, Ralph Keeling, took up the project—CO2 levels were just under 380 ppm. Plotted on a graph, the readings over time curve upwards sharply as humans added more and more CO2 to the atmosphere—which is why the readings came to be known as the Keeling Curve. (MORE: As the World Keeps Getting Warmer, California Begins to Cap Carbon) Now, thanks to Keeling&#8217;s successors at Scripps, we know that global CO2 levels are about to pass a major threshold: 400 ppm. It&#8217;s a momentous enough occasion, at least for scientists, that Scripps has begun releasing daily readings—today the level is 399.50 ppm—on a website and via a Twitter account. We<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=14991&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/05/02/greenhouse-effect-co2-concentrations-set-to-hit-record-high/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Climate Science</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/climate-science/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/143384846-jpeg.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/143384846-jpeg.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/143384846-jpeg.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">143384846.jpeg</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://bluemoon.ucsd.edu/co2_400/mlo_full_record.png" medium="image" />
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Leaks, Rats and Radioactivity: Fukushima&#8217;s Nuclear Cleanup Is Faltering</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/01/leaks-rats-and-radioactivity-why-fukushimas-nuclear-cleanup-is-faltering/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/01/leaks-rats-and-radioactivity-why-fukushimas-nuclear-cleanup-is-faltering/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 01 May 2013 04:00:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cleanup]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[disaster]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Fukushima]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[meltdown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nuclear]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[radiation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[water]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=14931</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Honestly, if the consequences weren&#8217;t potentially so dire, the ongoing struggles to clean up the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northern Japan would be the stuff of comedy. In March, an extended blackout disabled power to a vital cooling system for days. The cause: a rat that had apparently been chewing on cables in a switchboard. As if that&#8217;s not enough, another dead rat was found in the plant&#8217;s electrical works just a few weeks ago, which led to another blackout, albeit of a less important system. The dead rats were just the latest screwups in a series of screwups by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the owner of the Fukushima plant, that goes back to the day of March 11, 2011, when an earthquake and the resulting tsunami touched off a nuclear disaster that isn&#8217;t actually finished yet. I&#8217;m not sure things could be much worse if Wile E. Coyote were TEPCO&#8217;s CEO. But it&#8217;s not funny, not really, because the consequences of the meltdown and TEPCO&#8217;s mismanagement are very real. The latest threat comes from nearby groundwater that is pouring into the damaged reactor buildings. Once the water reaches the reactor it becomes highly contaminated by radioactivity. TEPCO workers have to pump the water out of the reactor to avoid submerging the important cooling system — the plant&#8217;s melted reactor cores, while less dangerous than they were in the immediate aftermath of the meltdown, still needed to be further cooled down. TEPCO can&#8217;t simply dump the irradiated groundwater into the nearby sea — the public outcry would be too great — so the company has been forced to jury-rig yet another temporary solution, building hundreds of tanks, each able to hold 112 Olympic-size pools worth of liquid, to hold the groundwater. So TEPCO finds itself in a race: Can its workers build enough tanks and clear enough nearby space to store the irradiated water — water that keeps pouring into the reactor at the rate of some 75 gal. a minute? More than two years after the tsunami,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=14931&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/05/01/leaks-rats-and-radioactivity-why-fukushimas-nuclear-cleanup-is-faltering/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nuclear</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/energy/nuclear-energy-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/519008431.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/519008431.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/519008431.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Juan Carlos Lentijo, the leader of the IAEA Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology, inspecting the unit four reactor building of the TEPCO Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Japan, on April 17, 2013.</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Why the Lazy Way to Shop for Groceries — Online — Is the Green Way</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/04/29/why-the-lazy-way-to-shop-for-groceries-online-is-the-green-way/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/04/29/why-the-lazy-way-to-shop-for-groceries-online-is-the-green-way/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:45:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[density]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[efficiency]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[farmer's market]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[farming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[freshdirect]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[urban farming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[whole foods]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=14885</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I am not a cook. Since graduating college, I&#8217;ve only lived in very large, very dense cities — Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York — and in very small apartments. I once went more than two years without actually connecting my stove to a gas supply. The inside of my refrigerator rarely contained more than beer, half-and-half and the remains of whatever I&#8217;d ordered from the Thai takeout place the night before — or, if I&#8217;m being honest, the week before. My cell phone was my main cooking utensil. My urban foraging method of food consumption wasn&#8217;t just about laziness, though. Without a car — I haven&#8217;t driven one regularly since high school — it&#8217;s always been difficult for me to get to a large market and bring home a decent assortment of groceries. I&#8217;m usually left with whatever I can carry from the local bodega — or, because I live in Brooklyn, extremely expensive (but high-quality!) organic produce. But that&#8217;s changed lately, thanks to the grocery-delivery service FreshDirect. I can order groceries online, and FreshDirect will deliver to my door for free. (Sound familiar? The great Web 1.0 flop Webvan had a similar business model. Times have changed.) For someone who hates shopping for food almost as much as I hate cooking it, FreshDirect is brilliant — and a little decadent. I always felt a bit guilty when I punched in an order. Surely a service that drives my groceries right to my doorstop must be worse for the environment than buying my own. Guess again. A new study in the Journal of the Transportation Research Forum shows that ordering groceries for delivery online is actually much greener than driving to the store and buying them yourself. A lot greener — the study found that delivery-service trucks produced 20% to 75% less carbon dioxide than the corresponding personal vehicles driven to and from a grocery store. If the delivery service employed routes that clustered customers together, to minimize trips, the savings were even higher. (MORE: Desert Dreams: Can the Middle Eastern Country of<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=14885&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/04/29/why-the-lazy-way-to-shop-for-groceries-online-is-the-green-way/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Food</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/food/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/1674442.jpeg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/1674442.jpeg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/1674442.jpeg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">1674442</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>As Harvard Closes a Primate Research Center, Are Lab Chimps Becoming a Thing of the Past?</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/04/24/as-harvard-closes-a-primate-research-center-are-lab-chimps-becoming-a-thing-of-the-past/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/04/24/as-harvard-closes-a-primate-research-center-are-lab-chimps-becoming-a-thing-of-the-past/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Apr 2013 12:00:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Animals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[animal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Animal Welfare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chimps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[harvard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[primates]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[research]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=14616</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In a surprise move, Harvard Medical School announced yesterday that it would be closing a controversial primate research center where four monkeys died between 2010 and 2012 because of problems with animal care. The New England Primate Research Center (NEPRC) in Southborough is set to be largely shut down by 2015, a decision that Harvard officials told the Boston Globe was mostly due to a difficult economic climate for biomedical research as the government cuts back sharply on spending. But it&#8217;s difficult to imagine that the animal welfare problems at the center—which was cited for violations by the U.S. Department of Agriculture—didn&#8217;t factor into the decision to shutter the labs. The decision is obviously going to be tough on the dozens of Harvard researchers whose work depends on lab primates. Nancy Haigwood, the director of the Oregon National Primate Research Center, told the Globe&#8216;s Carolyn Johnson: It’s very, very disturbing, disappointing, disheartening, shocking. I think it’s going to be very, very difficult to imagine that the investigators impacted by this decision will be able to keep up their momentum. We’re talking about very talented senior investigators who are at the peak of their careers. Work with live animals is expensive, and budget cuts are impacting public funding for science across the board. Still, the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—which spends about $87 million supporting primate research centers around the country—noted that the decision was made by Harvard alone. (MORE: Why Wild Animals and Hollywood Don&#8217;t Mix) The problems at the NEPRC go back to 2010, when a cotton-top tamarin was found dead in a cage that had been recently cleaned. Although investigators later determined that the animal had died of natural causes, the fact that staff members had failed to notice the monkey was dead was a violation of federal animal-welfare regulations. Another elderly cotton-top tamarin was later found in such poor condition—in part because its cage lacked a water bottle—that the monkey had to be euthanized. As officials at Harvard began probing the center, more troubling failures emerged, as Harvard Magazine reported<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=14616&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/04/24/as-harvard-closes-a-primate-research-center-are-lab-chimps-becoming-a-thing-of-the-past/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Ecocentric</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/ecocentric/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/90064565.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/90064565.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/90064565.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">90064565</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Earth Daze: What Happened to the Environmental Movement?</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/04/22/earth-daze-what-happened-to-the-environmental-movement/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/04/22/earth-daze-what-happened-to-the-environmental-movement/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:39:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmentalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Going Green]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[activism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cap and trade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Earth Day]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environmentalism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=14592</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s Earth Day, though you could be forgiven if you missed it. The annual event doesn&#8217;t quite have the same energy as it once did — especially not compared with the first Earth Day 43 years ago. That nationwide event, initially inspired by the work of Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, was celebrated by more than 20 million people in more than 12,000 events around the country. As Nicholas Lemann pointed out in a recent piece in the New Yorker, Congress took the day off, and two-thirds of its members — Democrat and Republican alike — spoke at Earth Day events. The Today show devoted 10 hours of airtime to Earth Day. And that mobilization — which was decentralized, mostly achieved through a tiny national office — paved the way for real government action: the Clean Air Act of 1970, the Clean Water Act of 1972, the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This year&#8217;s Earth Day was a little less memorable, and a whole lot less bipartisan. (I can&#8217;t imagine a Republican member of Congress giving a speech during Earth Day now unless they were calling for the dismantling of the EPA.) And it comes during a moment of crisis for the environmental movement as it attempts to grapple, so far unsuccessfully, with the existential threat of climate change. Back to Lemann: Then, 40 years after Earth Day, in the summer of 2010, the environmental movement suffered a humiliating defeat as unexpected as the success of Earth Day had been. The Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, announced that he would not bring to a vote a bill meant to address the greatest environmental problem of our time — global warming. The movement had poured years of effort into the bill, which involved a complicated system for limiting carbon emissions. Now it was dead, and there has been no significant environmental legislation since. Indeed, one could argue that there has been no major environmental legislation since 1990, when President George H.W. Bush signed a bill<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=14592&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/04/22/earth-daze-what-happened-to-the-environmental-movement/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Going Green</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/going-green/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/98347175.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/98347175.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/98347175.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">98347175</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>From Texas to China: When Man-Made Problems Make Natural Disasters Worse</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/04/22/china-and-texas-why-we-need-to-keep-natural-disasters-from-becoming-man-made-ones/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/04/22/china-and-texas-why-we-need-to-keep-natural-disasters-from-becoming-man-made-ones/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:45:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Disasters]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[death toll]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[earthquake]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[haiti]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[man-made disaster]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[natural disaster]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sichuan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[texas fertilizer explosion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=14548</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[On any other week, the events would have dominated the news. On April 16, an out-of-control fire at a fertilizer plant in the town of West, Texas, led to a massive explosion that would eventually kill 14 people — many of them firefighters responding to the blaze — and injure more than 200 people. And then early on April 20, just as the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings was captured half a world away, news broke of a 6.6-magnitude earthquake that hit the western Chinese province of Sichuan. The death toll there has risen to nearly 200 people, with more than 11,000 injured. Though neither disaster earned the attention they deserved, the number of dead and injured in both was actually higher than the toll of the Boston bombings — though it should be clear by now that we don&#8217;t dole out attention based on the death toll alone. It&#8217;s not hard to see why. Both the Texas fertilizer explosion and the Sichuan quake were accidents, while the Boston bombings were a deliberate attack, done to achieve maximum carnage and attention. But before we shift our focus entirely to the fathomless motivations of the Tsarnaev brothers, we should pause for a moment. The catastrophes in Texas and Sichuan may have been accidents — but that doesn&#8217;t mean that human action, or lack of it, could have made both worse than they needed to be. (MORE: Needless Disease and Death in Somalia) That much is already becoming clear as investigators sift through the wreckage of the West, Texas, fertilizer plant. The Associated Press reported that the West Chemical and Fertilizer Co., as the plant was called at the time, hasn&#8217;t been inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) since 1985 — when it was issued a $30 fine for a &#8220;serious violation&#8221; for storage of anhydrous ammonia. It&#8217;s not uncommon for businesses to go years between inspections — it&#8217;s all but inevitable given the OSHA&#8217;s scarce resources and the size of its brief — but clearly something<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=14548&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/04/22/china-and-texas-why-we-need-to-keep-natural-disasters-from-becoming-man-made-ones/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Disasters</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/disasters/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/167126477.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/167126477.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/167126477.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">A 6.6-magnitude earthquake hit the Chinese province of Sichuan, on April 20, 2013.</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Why Empowering Poor Women Is Good for the Planet</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/04/19/why-empowering-poor-women-is-good-for-the-planet/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/04/19/why-empowering-poor-women-is-good-for-the-planet/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Apr 2013 12:00:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Population]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Africa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[economy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[overpopulation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[population]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=14493</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Population used to be the environmental issue to end all environmental issues — and Paul Ehrlich was responsible. In 1968 Ehrlich, a demographer, and his wife Anne published The Population Bomb, which warned that overpopulation was going to turn the world into a Malthusian hellscape. The book — which was written partially at the suggestion of David Brower, then executive director of the Sierra Club — was influential and popular, selling over 2 million copies. What it wasn&#8217;t was right — the Ehrlichs failed to see that fertility rates would fall throughout much of the world, slowing population growth, and that advances in agriculture and technology would allow a much bigger and richer global population to survive and thrive (in most of the world, and at least so far). Today if someone starts talking about population, chances are worrying that there may be too few of us, not too many — conservatives like Jonathan Last fret that a declining fertility rate in developed nations will drag down the global economy. That&#8217;s arguable, especially during a time when our bigger problem seems to be global unemployment, especially among the young. It may also be besides the point — fertility rates have declined largely because people, when given the choice by contraception and changing cultural values, generally don&#8217;t want to have lots and lots of kids. Experts can wring their hands — and conservatives like the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat can blame it all on modern decadence — but there doesn&#8217;t seem to me much we can do about it. Which is probably for the best — there may be no more personal choice than the decision of if and when to have children. (MORE: Traffic: Why It’s Time to Get Serious About the Bloody Illegal Wildlife Trade) At least that&#8217;s the case in relatively free societies. As Paul Ehrlich points out in a new Science paper, co-authored with Partha Dasgupta of Cambridge University, in poorer or more repressed societies, social values and institutions can push women to have more children than they<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=14493&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/04/19/why-empowering-poor-women-is-good-for-the-planet/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Population</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/population-2/</primary_category_link>
		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>If Carbon Markets Can&#8217;t Work in Europe, Can They Work Anywhere?</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/04/17/if-carbon-markets-cant-work-in-europe-can-they-work-anywhere/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/04/17/if-carbon-markets-cant-work-in-europe-can-they-work-anywhere/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Apr 2013 07:00:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Carbon Policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cap and trade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ETS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EU]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Germany]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=14481</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[America may be a bit of a mess when it comes to climate policy—though that mess has been surprisingly effective in reducing carbon emissions in recent years—but environmentalists could always look across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe, where greens are green, cars are small and global warming actually matters. Countries like Germany and Spain have led the way in supporting renewable energy, and cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen put America to shame when it comes to encouraging dense development and carbon-free cycling. But the green jewel was the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS)—the European-wide carbon market, by far the largest such system in the world. The ETS, launched in 2005, allowed Europe to put a common price on a ton of carbon, which was meant to encourage utilities and factories to reduce carbon emissions in the most efficient way popular. A similar system carbon cap-and-trade system for the U.S. died in the Senate in 2010, and there&#8217;s little chance it will be revived any time soon. But the ETS—and carbon trading more generally—is not doing well, and its problems are taking some of the green shine off of Europe. Since its launch the ETS has struggled, with the price of carbon falling as the 2008 recession and overly generous carbon allowances undercut the market. In the ETS business are given free allowances to emit carbon—too many free allowances mean they don&#8217;t need to reduce their carbon emissions much, which erodes the demand for additional carbon allowances on the market and causes the price to drop. Prices fell from 25 euros a ton in 2008 to just 5 euros a ton in February. There was a way to fix this—take 900 million tons of carbon allowances off the market now and reintroduce them in five years time, when policymakers hoped the economy would be stronger and demand would be greater. As anyone who&#8217;s taken Econ 101 would know, artificially reducing the supply of carbon allowances in such a drastic way—something called &#8220;backloading&#8221;— should force the price back up. (MORE: As the World<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=14481&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/04/17/if-carbon-markets-cant-work-in-europe-can-they-work-anywhere/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Carbon Policy</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/carbon-policy/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/851808901.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/851808901.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/851808901.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">85180890</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Inside Win: A Non-Profit Site Wins a Pulitzer for Its Environmental Reporting</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/04/16/inside-win-a-non-profit-site-wins-a-pulitzer-for-its-environmental-reporting/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/04/16/inside-win-a-non-profit-site-wins-a-pulitzer-for-its-environmental-reporting/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:56:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oil]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[keystone]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oil sands]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oil spill]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pollution]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=14432</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It was understandably lost in the shuffle of the horrific bombings at the Boston Marathon, but the Pulitzer prizes were announced yesterday afternoon. As usual, mainstream organizations like the New York Times cleaned up—but the prize for national reporting went to a low-profile, non-profit website: Brooklyn-based InsideClimate News. Elizabeth McGowan, Lisa Song and David Hasemyer won for a multi-part investigative series on the Enbridge pipeline oil spill in July 2010—the first major spill of bitumen-diluted Canadian oil, similar to the sort that would be carried by the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, on U.S. soil. Here&#8217;s the beginning of the first story in the award-winning series: &#160; (PHOTOS: Exclusive Photos: The Oil Spill Spreads) An acrid stench had already enveloped John LaForge&#8217;s five-bedroom house when he opened the door just after 6 a.m. on July 26, 2010. By the time the building contractor hurried the few feet to the refuge of his Dodge Ram pickup, his throat was stinging and his head was throbbing. LaForge was at work excavating a basement when his wife called a couple of hours later. The odor had become even more sickening, Lorraine told him. And a fire truck was parked in front of their house, where Talmadge Creek rippled toward the Kalamazoo River. LaForge headed home. By the time he arrived, the stink was so intense that he could barely keep his breakfast down. Something else was wrong, too. Water from the usually tame creek had inundated his yard, the way it often did after heavy rains. But this time a black goo coated swaths of his golf course-green grass. It stopped just 10 feet from the metal cap that marked his drinking water well. Walking on the tarry mess was like stepping on chewing gum. LaForge said he was stooped over the creek, looking for the source of the gunk, when two men in a white truck marked Enbridge pulled up just before 10 a.m. One rushed to LaForge&#8217;s open front door and disappeared inside with an air-monitoring instrument. The man emerged less than a<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=14432&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/04/16/inside-win-a-non-profit-site-wins-a-pulitzer-for-its-environmental-reporting/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Oil</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/energy/oil/</primary_category_link>
		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Mega-Eruption: Scientists Connect a Mass Extinction to a Major Lava Flow</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/04/04/mega-volcano-scientists-connect-a-mass-extinction-to-a-major-eruption/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/04/04/mega-volcano-scientists-connect-a-mass-extinction-to-a-major-eruption/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:50:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Veronique Greenwood</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Disasters]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ancient]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[disaster]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[extinction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lava]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=14314</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Palisades cliffs west of New York City rear up from the Hudson River like the spine of some ancient beast—and that impression is not far off. Their basalt backbone is a remnant of an immense lava flow that engulfed what is now New Jersey, Nova Scotia, West Africa, and Brazil, among other places, 200 million years ago when they were neighbors on the great super-continent of Pangaea. Scientists have suspected for years that this lava flow, which welled up through the Earth&#8217;s crust and spread over millions of square kilometers, was linked to the end-Triassic extinction—a mass die-off around the same time that wiped at least half of the species then living on Earth. Among the victims were the crocodile-like creatures and long-jawed proto-mammals that had dominated the planet, and their sudden disappearance allowed the dinosaurs—at that point relative newcomers—to take over. But difficulties in lining up the dating of the basalt with the dating of the fossil layers had left the exact timing, and hence the possible connection between the two events, up in the air. But now researchers using an exquisitely precise dating technique have brought the timing into much better focus. In a recent paper in Science they reveal that there were four successive lava flows over a period of hundreds of thousands of years—and that the first one coincides closely with the extinction. These findings will allow scientists to investigate further how the eruptions might have led to the extinction, and paint the surprising picture that life began to recover even as the lava was still pouring out of the ground. (MORE: Traffic: Why It’s Time to Get Serious About the Bloody Illegal Wildlife Trade) A bit of fuzziness in the exact dates hasn&#8217;t stopped scientists from investigating the connection between the lava flows and the end-Triassic extinction in the past. Researchers have long discussed whether the doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that occurred around that time was the result of hot lava reacting with rocks around it, triggering catastrophic global warming and the resulting<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=14314&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/04/04/mega-volcano-scientists-connect-a-mass-extinction-to-a-major-eruption/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Disasters</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/disasters/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/165513390.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/165513390.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/165513390.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">165513390</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Smart Power: Why More Bytes Will Mean Fewer—and Cleaner—Electrons</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/03/26/smart-power-why-more-bytes-will-mean-fewer-and-cleaner-electrons/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/03/26/smart-power-why-more-bytes-will-mean-fewer-and-cleaner-electrons/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 26 Mar 2013 09:45:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Going Green]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[big data]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[computing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[energy efficiency]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IBM]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[renewable power]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=14210</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Improving energy efficiency is the no-brainer, no loser environmental policy. By limiting wasted power, we reduce the number of power plants we need—and their consequent pollution—and we save money. It shouldn’t be surprising that when President Barack Obama went looking for a green policy that the entire nation could agree with during his state of the union speech, he settled on energy efficiency, challenging Americans to “cut half the energy waste by our homes and businesses over the next 20 years.&#8221; Cutting energy waste is a matter of better lights and better insulation, better heaters and better air conditioners. But first and foremost it’s a data challenge. You can’t cut waste until you know what you’re wasting—and most of us have only the slightest idea of the energy we’re using at home. (Even big electricity users in business often aren&#8217;t much better—or need to employ human managers to monitor that usage manually, which cuts into any saving from efficiency.) Standard electricity meters might take one reading for an entire month, which makes trying to save energy like trying to lose weight if all you knew was the total amount of food you ate over the course of 30 days. “You need data to make energy saving work,” says Bennett Fisher, the CEO of the building efficiency startup Retroficiency. (MORE: SXSW: Using Big Data to Shrink Energy Waste) Thanks to the growth of smart sensors and the big data they produce—along with new companies that know how to crunch that information—energy users from huge factories down to individual households can track and reduce waste in a way that simply wasn&#8217;t possible just a few years ago. It’s the combination of energy technology with the Internet—or the Enernet, as some have called it—and it’s the hottest sector in clean tech right now, in part because it relies on relatively cheap, easily scalable software, rather than the expensive factories needed for, say, solar panel manufacturers. That makes the Enernet a smarter, safer play for venture capitalists burned in the wake of big ticket<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=14210&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/03/26/smart-power-why-more-bytes-will-mean-fewer-and-cleaner-electrons/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Going Green</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/going-green/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/158844119.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/158844119.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/158844119.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">158844119</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>After SARS: A New Virus in Saudi Arabia Underscores the Need to Police Disease in Animals</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/03/19/after-sars-a-new-virus-in-saudi-arabia-underscores-the-need-to-police-disease-in-animals/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/03/19/after-sars-a-new-virus-in-saudi-arabia-underscores-the-need-to-police-disease-in-animals/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 19 Mar 2013 06:00:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Going Green]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coronavirus]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[disease]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EcoHealth]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SARS]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=14082</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I became a science writer — well, at least a part-time one — because I lived through SARS. I was a reporter for TIME&#8217;s Hong Kong office 10 years ago, mostly covering books, films and whichever exotic destination I could convince my editors to send me to. (Like &#8230; Guangzhou!) But when SARS started spreading in Hong Kong in the spring of 2003 — from where it leapt to much of the rest of the world — I was hooked immediately. Experiencing science in real time, with human lives and billions of dollars on the line, was pure cut excitement. I remember getting a glimpse through an electron microscope of the coronavirus that caused SARS, not long after researchers at Hong Kong University had identified it, and being fascinated that a packet of genes, just 100 nanometers in diameter, could cause so much trouble. (For the best book on the SARS outbreak, check out former TIME Asia editor Karl Greenfeld&#8217;s China Syndrome — and not just because I&#8217;m in the index.) But my conversion wasn&#8217;t just about the rush of following an outbreak in real time. An emerging infectious disease like SARS pulls back the curtain on our world and demonstrates just how interconnected we all are, in more ways than just the global economy or international air travel. SARS, like most new diseases, started in an animal before jumping across the species barrier to human beings. The original reservoir for SARS was actually a bat, and it&#8217;s still not clear how the virus managed to cross from them to us, though the anything-goes standards of the live markets of southern China, where wild animals of all sorts are available for consumption and where the SARS outbreak began, definitely played a role. Researchers initially thought that civet cats transmitted the virus to human beings — Chinese officials even culled thousands of civet cats in the months after SARS to prevent a resurgence — though now it seems possible that the cats caught it from us. No matter how the virus jumped,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=14082&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2013/03/19/after-sars-a-new-virus-in-saudi-arabia-underscores-the-need-to-police-disease-in-animals/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Going Green</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/going-green/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/1872414.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/1872414.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/1872414.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">SARS Hong Kong</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/45aadd4bcc836917a2bee9da10316e12?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">bryanrwalsh</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
	</channel>
</rss>