EcocentricOil
With the blown Macondo well essentially sealed, and with the oil remaining under the water dissipating (though to uncertain ecological effects), focus is now turning to the ongoing investigations into the cause of the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. Wednesday morning BP released the results of its own internal investigation into the …
EcocentricOceans
Over on the Time.com mainpage, I have a piece up about my trip to the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Science (BIOS) in, unsurprisingly, Bermuda. The visit was part of a longer reporting trip I took to the island last week with the oceanographer and environmentalist Sylvia Earle, for a piece on ocean health I’ll be writing soon for the …
EcocentricOceans
The anti-whaling movement scored a partial victory today in Tokyo, where two Japanese activists affiliated with Greenpeace were convicted of stealing whale meat, but were given a suspended sentence. Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki were found guilty of stealing 50 lbs. (23 kg) of whale meat from a delivery company’s warehouse in April 2008, …
EcocentricOil
After about 4.9 million barrels of oil, 136 days, over 2 million gallons of chemical dispersants, over 10 million feet of shoreline boom, 411 controlled surface burns, over 4,000 vessels and nearly 30,000 people mobilized, BP’s blown well has been effectively neutralized. Yesterday BP successfully removed the Macondo well’s original …
EcocentricOceans
Our trip’s timing to Bermuda this week couldn’t have been much more fortuitous. We arrived just as Hurricane Danielle was running out of steam after whipping Bermuda with high waves, and Hurricane Earle to the east is likely to make conditions rough by the end of the week. But right now, as we depart on the Explorer—myself, the …
EcocentricOceans
Over on the Time.com mainpage, I have a piece on the worrying bleaching events ocurring to coral reefs around the world, thanks largely to warming ocean temperatures. Though the sudden bleachings we’re seeing in places like Indonesia immediately have to do with unusually warm water temperatures caused in part by this year’s El Nino, …
EcocentricUncategorized
I’m on the road again—or in this case, the high seas. I’ll be spending this week in and around the Atlantic island of Bermuda with Her Deepness, Sylvia Earle—the famed American oceanographer I can best describe as America’s Jacques Cousteau. As I’ve written before, the 75-year-old Earle—who has spent her career exploring the …
EcocentricUncategorized
Update [11:11 PM EDT]: It’s worth taking a look at some of the recommendations made by the IAC report:
The IAC report makes several recommendations to fortify IPCC’s management structure, including establishing an executive committee to act on the Panel’s behalf and ensure that an ongoing decision-making capability is maintained. To
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EcocentricEnergy
Bill Gates—through his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—revolutionized the health world by focusing vast amounts of money on diseases of the developing world that hadn’t responded to traditional philanthropy. (That’s why TIME put Gates, his wife Melinda and U2 frontman Bono on the cover as People of the Year in 2005.) Lately, …
EcocentricInvasive Species
The dreaded Asian carp are back in the news today. The five Great Lakes states—Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Ohio—suing to beef up anti-carp defenses scored a legal victory yesterday:
On Monday, a federal judge held an initial hearing and scheduled more hearings for expert testimony in early September. The
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