Individual and Community

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - HOW TO ACHIEVE PERMANENT DELETION - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Go to this page:
http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account

Click “Submit” and follow the instructions.

Your account will be deactivated for two weeks, and if you don’t log in during that period, your account is permanently deleted.

This method is official and should be complete, i.e. no need to delete individual photos, comments, messages or items from your profile or anywhere else on Facebook!

source: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16929680703

April 22, 2009, 8:13 am
Is Being Overweight a Climate Problem?
By James Kanter
The Associated Press

He’s contributing more to global warming, a study suggests.

Looking for inspiration to lose weight?

It may be worth taking a look at the results of a report in latest issue of the International Journal of Epidemiology.

The study concludes that being overweight or obese “should be recognized as an environmental problem” because of its contribution to climate change from additional food and transport emissions.

Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine found that a lean population, such as the Vietnamese, consume about 20 percent less food and produce fewer greenhouse gases than a population in a country like the United States, where about 40 percent of people are obese.

The authors also found that transport emissions will be significantly less in countries with healthy average body weights because it takes less energy to transport slim people.

Many people already are aware that driving an S.U.V. or traveling by plane can dramatically boost the size of an individual’s carbon footprint, and the study seems to support the idea that some of the most effective ways of reducing emissions begin with changes in individual lifestyles.

Governments around the world are beginning to tax and regulate those activities on the basis that doing so will help protect the climate. But the implication is that attention could start to focus on size of individuals’ waistlines — and that could raise the specter of discrimination on the basis of weight.

(Such discrimination on the basis of body weight has been the subject of controversy in the transport sector in past years. The Irish no-frills airline Ryanair announced Wednesday that roughly one-third of respondents to a company poll had voted in favor of a so-called fat tax. “The revenues from any such fat tax will be used to lower the airfares for all Ryanair passengers yet further,” the airline said.)

“Humankind — be it Australian, Argentinian, Belgian or Canadian — is getting steadily fatter,” the London researchers say in their study. “We need to be doing a lot more to reverse the global trend towards fatness, and recognize it as a key factor in the battle to reduce emissions and slow climate change.”

original source: http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/is-being-overweight-a-climate-problem/?hp

Eating Too Much Red Meat May Shorten Life
Major Study Finds an Effect, but Critics Say Meat Offers Important Nutrients
By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter

Mar. 23

MONDAY, March 23 (HealthDay News) — Diets high in red meat and in processed meat shorten life span not just from cancer and heart disease but from Alzheimer’s, stomach ulcers and an array of other conditions as well, a U.S. National Cancer Institute study has found.

In fact, reducing meat consumption to the amount eaten by the bottom 20 percent seen in the study would save 11 percent of men’s lives and 16 percent of women’s, according to the study.
Read the rest of this entry »

By ELIANE ENGELER –

GENEVA (AP) — Glaciers in Antarctica are melting faster and across a much wider area than previously thought, a development that threatens to raise sea levels worldwide and force millions of people to flee low-lying areas, scientists said Wednesday.

Researchers once believed that the melting was limited to the Antarctic Peninsula, a narrow tongue of land pointing toward South America. But satellite data and automated weather stations now indicate it is more widespread.

The melting “also extends all the way down to what is called west Antarctica,” said Colin Summerhayes, executive director of the Britain-based Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.

“That’s unusual and unexpected,” he told The Associated Press in an interview.

By the end of the century, the accelerated melting could cause sea levels to climb by 3 to 5 feet — levels substantially higher than predicted by a major scientific group just two years ago.

original source link

Read the rest of this entry »

Scientist Discovers Fungus That Could Fuel A Car

by Alex Chadwick
A researcher at Montana State University has found a micro-organism in a plant in South America that could fuel vehicles one day. The unusual fungus contains the essence of diesel, which one could use to run a bus, for example, without processing it at all.

Professor Gary Strobel discusses his findings on “myco-diesel,” which are being published Wednesday in The Journal of Microbiology in London.

Dr. Strobel made the discovery by chance, while collecting fungus from the stem of a tree in an old forest in southern Chile. When he finally got around to sending it off for sophisticated analysis — years later — he discovered that this version of Gliocladium wasn’t like others he’d encountered before.

“I’ve scoured the earth for not only organisms like Gliocladium, but many other endophytes [a plant that lives in the tissue of another plant]. I’ve been to almost every rainforest on the planet,” he tells Alex Chadwick. But, “in over 50 years, I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Why would a fungus create diesel? Essentially to protect from plant invaders, he says.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96574076
Audio also available at that link.

stolen from http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com who stole it from THe CHicago Times or some such …

Hollywood is often described as a dream factory, but really it’s just as often a salvage yard. Anxious studio executives would rather bet their $100m budgets on nostalgia instead of new ideas, which is why, against all odds, Sid and Marty Krofft are back in business.

The Krofft brothers, both now in their 70s, have a showbiz story that dates to the final days of vaudeville. But for children of the Nixon years, their name is the brand behind some of the strangest TV programming of the era, shows such as H.R. Pufnstuf, Lidsville, Land of the Lost and Sigmund and the Sea Monsters.

Those low-budget shows had actors in rubber costumes, fluorescent puppets and psychedelic sets that were hopelessly dated by the 1980s, and, by the end of that decade, the same could be said of the Kroffts. Today, though, thanks to the Hollywood appetite for all things kitschy and high-concept, the Kroffts are poised for the biggest payday of their career — unless, of course, they strangle each other first. “Things did get lean, but we never gave up,” said Sid, 78, the smiling, soft-spoken dreamer of the two.

His brother, sitting next to him at their Los Angeles office, rolled his eyes. “We? I wouldn’t let you give up,” snapped Marty, still the dealmaker at 71. “I wouldn’t let us sell the rights to our old shows. That is why we are where we are today.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Watch it, buy it:
http://despair.com/more.html

The Academy-Award nominated animated short-film tells the story of a lonely inventor, whose colorless existence is brightened only by dreams of the carefree bliss of his youth.

By day, he is trapped in a dehumanizing job in a joyless world. But by night, he tinkers away on a visionary invention, desperate to translate his inspiration into something meaningful.

When his invention is complete, it will change the way people see the world. But he will find that success comes at a high price, as it changes himself, as well.

Pictures from More

Producer’s Home Page

McCain Sept 20, 2008

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/mccain-approves-open/669582/

Palin and Hillary Clinton

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/palin-hillary-open/656281/

As they are saying… here is the real ‘inconvenient truth’….

Nov 2006:
Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars, UN report warns

29 November 2006 – Cattle-rearing generates more global warming greenhouse gases, as measured in CO2 equivalent, than transportation, and smarter production methods, including improved animal diets to reduce enteric fermentation and consequent methane emissions, are urgently needed, according to a new United Nations report released today.

“Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems,” senior UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) official Henning Steinfeld said. “Urgent action is required to remedy the situation.”

Cattle-rearing is also a major source of land and water degradation, according to the FAO report, Livestock’s Long Shadow–Environmental Issues and Options, of which Mr. Steinfeld is the senior author.

“The environmental costs per unit of livestock production must be cut by one half, just to avoid the level of damage worsening beyond its present level,” it warns.

When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 per cent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 per cent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.

source: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20772&Cr=global&Cr1=environment

United Nations: Eat Less Meat
Monday September 8, 2008

To combat global warming, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, advises, “Give up meat for one day [a week] initially, and decrease it from there.” Pachauri is a vegetarian himself, and points out that greenhouse gas emissions and habitat destruction are associated with animal agriculture. To most animal advocates, this is old news. Even to the United Nations, this is old news.

source: http://animalrights.about.com/b/2008/09/08/united-nations-eat-less-meat.htm

Some links for reasons people are vegetarian

49 REASONS WHY I AM A VEGETARIAN
http://www.britishmeat.com/49.htm

Another:
http://www.ecomall.com/greenshopping/pveg1.htm

Graphic, pointed video, features some slaughterhouse footage:
http://www.goveg.com/feat/chewonthis/

Now the average consumer can participate in the renewable energy revolution. You can power your home with wind energy, biomass, and other renewable energy sources. All without installing any new equipment.

Alliant Energy’s Second Nature Program allows you to buy renewable energy for your home.

When your family participates in Second Nature, you’re helping us buy earth-friendly wind power and bioenergy.

Through Alliant Energy’s innovative Second Nature™ program, your family can support renewable energy equal to 25 percent, 50 percent or even 100 percent of your household electric usage each month.

This additional renewable energy comes from new Second Nature resources, above and beyond Alliant Energy’s standard sources.

As electricity from renewable sources comes into the energy pool, it displaces electricity that would otherwise come from fossil fuel sources like coal and natural gas.

Caveat: You must live in Iowa, Wisconsin, or Minnesota.

Your small monthly contribution covers the added expense of harvesting the wind power and biomass energy used in the program:

* Your electric meter measures the kilowatt-hours you use each month. We use your Second Nature participation level (25%, 50% or 100%) to figure how much green energy you require.
* Next, we combine your requirement with other Second Nature customers to get the month’s total green requirement.
* Then, we bring enough new green power into our energy pool to meet the total green requirement.

Learn more and sign up here. You can even sign up online.