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Here's what an hour's worth of ocean trash looks like

This artwork by Chris Jordan is made up of 2.4 million pieces of plastic, all collected from the Pacific Ocean. (You can see details here.) This is already staggering, but it's actually only a fraction of what gets pumped into the ocean every hour. If every one of these pieces were a pound of plastic, […]

Chesapeake Bay dead zone could be the largest ever

One-third of the Chesapeake Bay is a dead zone this year. The Washington Post reports:

Especially heavy flows of tainted water from the Susquehanna River brought as much nutrient pollution into the bay by May as normally comes in an entire average year, a Maryland Department of Natural Resources researcher said. As a result, “in Maryland we saw the worst June” ever for nutrient pollution, said Bruce Michael, director of the DNR’s resource assessment service.

The dead zone could grow to be the largest ever.

Lawns are evil

Climate change already killing baby polar bears

Climate change isn't just killing polar bears, it's killing baby polar bears. YOU MONSTER.

A study that tracked polar bears swimming long distances found cubs that swam more than 30 miles at a time were more likely to die than cubs that didn't. Baby polars have a hard time making those swims because:

Sunlight can disinfect water

Turns out the nonsensical yuppie idea that bottled water is “cleaner” is actually true, in very very specific circumstances. In areas where it’s hard to find drinkable water, plastic bottles and sunlight can save lives.

SODIS, or solar water disinfection, is a fancy way of saying, "Leave germy water in a plastic bottle out on your hot roof and eventually all the bad stuff will die." It's a simple idea, but remarkably effective at dealing with water contamination.

The $50,000 playhouse that oil built

Ever wonder what oil executives do with all the money they make from wrecking the planet? Well, take a tour with me through the playhouse that oil exec John Schiller ($7.7 million in compensation in 2010, including a $2.6 million bonus) had built for his 4-year-old. That's an artist's conception above, not the actual blueprint, but all the features -- air conditioning, running water, fireplace, 32-inch flat-screen TV -- are for real. (The New York Times has pictures, too.)

Critical List: DeChristopher sentencing today; Gingrich invests in renewables

Activist Tim DeChristopher's sentencing is scheduled for today. He could go to prison for as many as 10 years.

Congress is still hard at work cutting funding for all manner of environmental programs.

With the West out as a customer, Iran is selling its natural gas to Iraq and Syria.

Green is the new red: environmental activists under attack

Will Potter on the eerie parallels between the Red Scare and the kind of repression and paranoia the green movement faces today.

25 days of dares: Planet pictures, tossing toxins

In the third week of Umbra's month of dares, she dresses up like a bee and stops to smell the planet.

Nissan Leaf Orphan Finds New Home

You can read my earlier Leaf posts here, here, here, and here. The Leaf I ordered is not due to arrive for another two months. Another engineer that I work with called me up (while he was on vacation) to tell me that he had just test driven an orphaned (the ordering party decided not […]