Special New Year with a blue moon in the Americas and partial eclipse in Asia

right: full moon over the Prairie, from flicker.com

December 30, 2009

from Mercopress.com

The blue moon has long been a subject of poetry and one of those phrases that are used without quite understanding the meaning, but its presence is a scientific marker for a rotating earth that runs by its own clock, ignoring man’s calendar...

Simply put, on Thursday, December 31, 2009, there will be second full moon in a calendar month of December, an occurrence called blue moon and on time for the New Year countdown.

Only once in every 20 years, the blue moon appears on New Year’s Eve, as it is going to do this year.

This New Year's Eve blue moon will be visible in the United States, Canada, Europe, South America and Africa. In Australia and Asia, the full moon does not show up until New Year's Day, making January a blue moon month for them...

read entire article here

Prairie Chicken protections may threaten wind energy in Oklahoma

By The Associated Press
via newsok.com
August 5, 2009

LUBBOCK, Texas — A little prairie chicken could give the wind energy industry big fits in Texas, Oklahoma and three other states.

Should the lesser prairie chicken become listed as threatened or endangered — and it’s close now — there would be significant restrictions on companies hoping to plant towering turbines across a five-state region believed to have some of the nation’s best wind energy potential.

"We’ve never seen the likes of this,” said Texas Parks and Wildlife Department wildlife biologist Heather Whitlaw, who is part of conservation efforts with the other states and believes the bird could be listed within two years. "Anybody who puts anything on our landscape would be evaluated in one form or another.”

Scientists believe the prairie chicken population has dropped 80 percent nationally since 1963, the result of habitat loss and fragmentation, population isolation, drought and changes in land usage.

They once numbered about 3 million across an area that stretches through eastern New Mexico, eastern Colorado, western Kansas, northwest Oklahoma, and in parts of the Texas Panhandle and South Plains. Estimates show their population now at about 30,000.

The birds’ habitat could shrink further beginning in September when 1.3 million acres in the five-state area come out of a federal land conservation program started about 25 years ago. Farmers and ranchers may then use the land as they wish — which could include crop cultivation that would eliminate more of the bird’s breeding and nesting grounds.

Their habitats also lie in areas with plentiful and strong wind resources — where energy companies are eager to build.

The companies, which have been criticized before over the number of birds and bats killed by flying into the blades of wind turbines, are being more careful about where they put wind farms, said Laurie Jodziewicz, a spokeswoman for the American Wind Energy Association.

For the lesser prairie chicken, it’s not about the blades — it’s about size.

The shortflight bird, which weighs about 400 grams, has an aversion to tall structures around its breeding and nesting grounds because its predators include raptors who perch in high places awaiting their opportunity.

For about five years the wind industry generally has not heeded a 2004 recommendation from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asking companies not to put turbines within 5 miles of a lek, the lesser prairie chickens’ breeding grounds. The American Wind Energy Association has asked for the scientific basis of the 5-mile limit.

"We still have not seen anything that looked at prairie grouse and leks and wind turbines,” Jodziewicz said. "I don’t know that (any wind company) is” looking at the 5-mile limit.
The lesser prairie chicken should have been listed as threatened or endangered 10 years ago, said Mark Salvo with the Sante Fe, N.M.-based group WildEarth Guardians, which filed a listing petition for it in the mid-1990s.

Restoring the prairie chicken population "will be much more difficult now” even if it is listed, he said. Moreover, as developers "slice and dice the habitat into ever smaller spaces,” Salvo said, other plants and animals that depend on that kind of habitat also will suffer.

"It’s already a relatively small landscape and it’s getting smaller,” he said. "We are in an emergency situation here.”

Going nude the new 'green'

Right: Large guy at clothing-optional beach. How would you like to be the person who gave this guy his Brazilian wax job?

June 30, 2009
Written by Broderick Perkins
examiner.com



Going nude, called naturism, has long been associated with a back-to-nature lifestyle.

It's not surprising then that bopping around the buff is being promoted as a "green" lifestyle.

Nakedness cuts waste and pollution in numerous ways according to writer Kathy Blanchard on The Naturist Society's Web site.

"Living more hours naked each day results in a dramatic drop in my laundry, which in turn reduces my water and energy use (along with my related bills)," she writes. "It also reduces the amount of soap I release," not washing clothes, she said.

Nudity doesn't mean you bathe less, you "textilists" (aterm naturists use to describe clothes-wearers).

Recognizing clothes are typically optimal in most places, she also suggests buying eco-friendly clothes made from Earth-friendlier materials like hemp or organic cotton.

Blanchard says there are other ways to shed clothes and reduce reduce your carbon footprint, and your own footprint (shoes, see, make a larger footprint).

• Hosting neighborhood clothing-optional parties. I think you could get arrested for that on the prairie. Neighborhood travel will have little negative impact on the environment, and you'll make nude friends and sustain neighborhood relationships.

• Gardening in your birthday suit. Watch out for thorns and thistles, but nudist clubs may be open to members adopting small plots of land for small-scale gardening. Members can keep the food they produce. "And how cool would it be for a club to become known locally as the group that gardens naked and gives the produce to the local food bank?" Just be sure to wash those veggies before eating.

• Traveling light. Nude hiking in the Swiss Alps is really cool. Backpack or paddle naked into the wild and you'll use virtually no fuel, your diet will be minimal with low ecological impact, and you'll return healthier -- without that stinky suitcase full of soiled clothes.

• Sleeping without clothes. This is easy. Go to bed and get up earlier to save electricity and use day light - and, again, have fewer clothes to wash.

You get the idea.
Take it off, take it all off and save the planet.
.
A close friend moved out to the boonies here on the prairie. Secluded , but with one other house fairly close. He moved in and met his next door neighbors--a couple, very sociable and nice. The only quirk is that the husband likes to build things in his back yard in the buff--big things like sheds and decks. There is a privacy fence and my friend loudly announces his presence when he's approaching. Never seen him for myself, but I can visualize a naked guy with a tool belt and work boots. Guess you never know...

Giant blob found deep beneath Nevada

The blob, which drips like honey, is between 15 and 20 million years old

By Jeanna Bryner
msnbc.com

May 27, 2009

Hidden beneath the U.S. West's Great Basin, scientists have spied a giant blob of rocky material dripping like honey.

The Great Basin consists of small mountain ranges separated by valleys and includes most of Nevada, the western half of Utah and portions of other nearby states.

While studying the area, John West of Arizona State University and his colleagues found evidence of a large cylindrical blob of cold material far below the surface of central Nevada.

Comparison of the results with CAT scans of the inside of Earth taken by ASU's Jeff Roth suggested they had found a so-called lithospheric drip. (Earth's lithosphere comprises the crust or outer layer of Earth and the uppermost mantle.)

Here's how it works: "The Earth's mantle, which lies below the thin outer crust we live on, consists of rock which deforms plastically on very long time scales due to the heat and pressure at depth," West said. "In any material which can flow (including the mantle), a heavy object will tend to sink through lighter material."

And this is what the scientists think is happening with the lithospheric drip. A region of heavier material trapped in the lithosphere gets warmed up and begins to sink into the lighter, less dense mantle beneath, pulling a long tail of material after it.

"Honey dripping off of a spoon is a visual aid to what we think the drip looks like," West told LiveScience. "Dripping honey tends to lead with a large blob of honey, with a long tail of material following the initial blob."

He said the blob is between about 30 miles and 60 miles in diameter (between 50 km and 100 km) and extends from a depth of about 47 miles to at least 310 miles (75 km to 500 km) beneath Earth's surface...

The team thinks this drip started some 15 million to 20 million years ago and probably detached from the overlying plate only recently. At first, it was hard for the team to reconcile their discovery with what scientists knew about the region. Over the past tens of millions of years, the Earth's crust in the Great Basin has undergone extension, or stretching.

"We wondered how you could have something like a drip that is drawing material into its center when the surface of the whole area is stretching apart," said ASU researcher Matthew Fouch. "But it turns out that there is an area right above the drip, in fact the only area in the Great Basin, that is currently undergoing contraction."

Last year, Arizona State University Allen McNamara explained how Earth is not neatly divided into a crust, mantle and core. Rather, several large blobs of highly compressed rock — which he described as behaving like honey or peanut butter — exist.

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The researchers' analyses suggest the newfound drip won't cause the area to sink down or pop up quickly; nor will it cause earthquakes. In fact, they say there would probably be little or no impact on people living above the drip.

The research, funded by the National Science Foundation, is detailed in the May 24 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience.