TOP 100 CAMPING SITES
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| Out of the Wilderness: The Mainstream Green Movement Heads toward People of Color A little over a decade ago, the major players in the environmental movement tried to take on Florida's sugar producers. The industry's fertilizers were polluting the Everglades, and the environmentalists asked Florida voters to approve a penny-per-pound tax on sugar companies that would yield $35 million a year for cleanup work.But "Big Sugar" responded with a multimillion-dollar campaign to portray the environmentalists as white elitists attempting to weaken an industry that employed blacks and Latinos. Jesse Jackson joined forces with the industry, telling Floridians, "We should never have a showdown between alligators and people." With the help of minority group blocs, voters soundly rejected the tax. [More] rss.sciam.com |
How do you stop San Francisco Bay from flooding the city? Hold a contest Waters in San Francisco Bay will likely be 40 centimeters higher in 40 years thanks to climate change. That may sound like a drop in the bucket for the famously hilly city, but the upper estimate for the next century--tides up 1.4 meters--could threaten buildings and city infrastructure, especially in the case of warming-fueled storm surges. [More] rss.sciam.com |
City’s Beach Clubs Catch Government Scrutiny Surf clubs in the Rockways are throwbacks to summers past, but because they use federal land for private purposes, their long-term future is uncertain. nytimes.com |
Recreational Boat Motors Get Greener with New EPA Emission Standards Dear EarthTalk: I’ve heard that hybrid engine technology is now being used to power boats. What’s happening with that? --D. Smith, Portland, ME [More] rss.sciam.com |
Better Mileage Now--Improving the Combustion Engine (preview) Demand for automobiles is rising worldwide. So is concern about greenhouse gas emissions. In response, scientists and engineers are working diligently to perfect new power plants for future vehicles, including battery and hydrogen fuel-cell electric cars. Although these and other alternatives show great promise for the long term, perhaps the single greatest way to reduce fossil-fuel consumption in the near term is to further improve today’s dominant transportation power plant: the gasoline internal-combustion (IC) engine.Fortunately, efficiency can be raised in a number of ways, notably, better control over the air-fuel mixture entering the combustion chamber, over the way gasoline is ignited there, and over the mechanical systems that harness that energy. These can improve traditional automobiles as well as gasoline-electric hybrid models. [More] rss.sciam.com |