BBC News - The goats fighting America's plant invasion

BBC News - The goats fighting America's plant invasion:

A different approach to invasives. That would be Kudzu. I wonder how it works with balsam pear in Florida? How about the melaleuca?

Old school, but an effective approach to attach invasive plants is the old goat trick.

What I didn't realize before reading this article, is that the double chew and strong processing of the stomach reduce the changes of seed making the passage through the digestive system (and coming out carefully planted and fully fertilized).

First heard about the herd from NR.

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NASA, NOAA Find 2014 Warmest Year in Modern Record | NASA

NASA, NOAA Find 2014 Warmest Year in Modern Record | NASA

This is a good recap of the tie in to record warming with human activity.

It also give links the the raw data and the detailed methodology.

Anybody want to play with the raw, unadulterated data, you will find a LOT of it; and no matter which way you look at it trend line appears. And the trend line is very depressing.

BUT...

This blog is devoted to easy, affordable solutions that can be implemented right now, in a business friendly way. In fact, the first things that can be done, energy efficiency and telecommuting, offer huge savings to everyone concerned (and a nice boost in the direction of sustainability).

Why not start by picking the low-lying fruit now, and then address the heavy lifting as the next step.

Orrrr, we all can wait and wait until governments to get into the mix to help us all with the problems.:-(

We like the business now solution.

It's Official: 2014 Was the Hottest Year on Record (watch the data unfold)

It's Official: 2014 Was the Hottest Year on Record:


This is a very cool -- oops, hot, I mean -- visual of the earth temperatures over recent decades.

As you will see, the monthly averages and the annual averages spike up year after year. Only a few monthly numbers are higher now then in 1995 and almost no monthly numbers are higher than the 20th century average.


2014 was unusual as a hot year because is was not an el nino year. This was a "normal" year in which 5 of the hottest months on record occurred. 2014 outpaced the prior hottest months of 2010 and 2005.


You have to go back a decade to find a coldest record month. That's some ugly statistics, no matter how you look at it.

Here's a different graphic of combined land and surface temperatures in this US Today article. Notice that you could start over with a trend line at about 1995 and produce a new trend line that is simply higher than the historical average of a century.

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Study: sea levels rising quicker than previously estimated - Blue and Green Tomorrow

Study: sea levels rising quicker than previously estimated - Blue and Green Tomorrow:

This is a bit of good news which really is really bad news related to sea level rise.

The good news, if you can call it that is sea levels appear to have been rising far slower during the first century of the industrial revolution than previously measured (estimated). Apparently the tidal measures that have been around for centuries didn't represent some areas well, the poles and Florida, for example. A new study publishing in Nature analyzes and adjusts for the big gaps in prior ocean level measures. This is from a study in the journal Nature. Here.

The bad news, is that the last few decades have been more than twice what was measured/estimated.

At the new rate of 3mm per year, sea levels should rise only about one foot over the next 100 years. But this doesn't count thermal expansion of the oceans warming (thermal expansion) over time such that a couple degrees centigrade should produce yards of increased sea levels once the temperature works its way through some 2 miles of ocean (on average).

If this doesn't make you nervous, you have been munching out a little too much on Colorado brownies, and not living very close to the sea shore.

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