Salon.com > OnEarth.org http://www.salon.com Tue, 02 Jul 2013 23:35:08 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Phantom noise could spark diplomatic dispute http://www.salon.com/2013/06/29/phantom_hum_could_spark_international_diplomatic_dispute_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/29/phantom_hum_could_spark_international_diplomatic_dispute_partner/#comments Sat, 29 Jun 2013 16:30:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13340091 OnEarth Gary Grosse first heard the sound at 2 a.m. on a hot summer night in 2009. The air was still and the windows open, and the sound startled him out of slumber. Grosse, annoyed and unable to fall back asleep, jumped in his car and drove around looking for the source of the deep, rumbling pulse that now seemed to suffuse his leafy suburb of Windsor, Ontario, not far from the U.S. border. He ended up at the Detroit River, near the local power plant. Figuring the sound must be coming from the building, he dismissed it as a one-time irritation that would probably soon be fixed.

Sherry Kelly, a resident of nearby LaSalle, first noticed the noise a year and a half later, in the winter of 2011. An accountant with young children, she would stay up late catching up on work while her family was in bed and the house was quiet. “You think, is there something wrong with my hearing?” she says. “You look outside the window because it sounds like a truck idling. If there was a teenager in a sports car parked outside with his music on and the windows up -- it sounds like that.” But she was reluctant to mention the noise to anyone else. “For me, being a professional, you don’t want to step up and have people be, ‘Oh, she’s the crazy one who hears a hum.’”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/29/phantom_hum_could_spark_international_diplomatic_dispute_partner/feed/ 19 Fighting more forest fires will come back to burn us http://www.salon.com/2013/06/21/we_dont_need_no_water_let_the_forest_fires_burn_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/21/we_dont_need_no_water_let_the_forest_fires_burn_partner/#comments Fri, 21 Jun 2013 16:48:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13333080 OnEarth A year ago, as Colorado was in the midst of the one of the worst wildfire seasons in the state’s history (something that looks to be matched or even surpassed this year), I climbed the mountains above my home in Boulder. There was a brief reprieve between blazes, and I was hoping to find blue sky, but the air was still filled with enough smoke to make me cough. More than 600 miles from the peak where I stood, the Whitewater Baldy Fire in the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico -- the largest fire in that state’s history -- was blanketing my home with a thick haze.

It was hard to see hope in the smoke, but it was there when I looked for it.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/21/we_dont_need_no_water_let_the_forest_fires_burn_partner/feed/ 7 Down with free parking! http://www.salon.com/2013/06/09/down_with_free_parking_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/09/down_with_free_parking_partner/#comments Sun, 09 Jun 2013 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13320721 OnEarth In the multi-level parking garage that sits directly across the street from where I’m typing these words, in the heart of Manhattan’s business-filled Flatiron District, an hour of parking will set you back $27.03. I’m told by the friendly attendant there that he almost always has spaces available. Still, if you’re willing to drive around for a while and hunt for a hard-to-find metered spot on the street, you might be able to zoom your way into one just as its previous occupant is zooming out of it.

To celebrate your accomplishment, you really should treat yourself to lunch. I’d recommend the house-ground wagyu beef cheeseburger with triple crème Brie and caramelized onion aioli at Alison Eighteen, a nearby restaurant -- though at $17, it doesn’t come cheap. Still, with the amount of money you just saved by parking at a $3.50-per-hour spot on the street, you’ll have no trouble covering the lunch bill. And while you’re savoring your $23.53 in savings, as well as the last of your “frites” (they don’t call them “fries” when you’re paying this much for them), ponder this question: What, do you suppose, is the “fair market value” of a one-hour parking spot in this part of town?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/09/down_with_free_parking_partner/feed/ 5 Why the poor may be more prone to asthma http://www.salon.com/2013/06/05/low_income_neighborhoods_may_be_more_allergy_prone_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/05/low_income_neighborhoods_may_be_more_allergy_prone_partner/#comments Wed, 05 Jun 2013 16:20:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13314494 OnEarth On a chilly morning in New York City this past February, Kate Weinberger found herself standing in front of a family of French tourists while trying to wrench a hand-drill around a pair of sneakers that had been left dangling from a traffic light above Lafayette Street. A doctoral student at Columbia University’s School of Public Health, Weinberger had selected this SoHo perch, in front of a menswear boutique, as an optimal location for trapping pollen. Now she was trying to secure a strip of steel around the traffic light in order to hang her pollen monitor, and the shoes were getting in the way.

Considering how bad this spring has been for allergy sufferers, you wouldn’t think pollen would be a hard thing to catch. But pollen monitors are notoriously labor-intensive devices, requiring pollonologists to hand count spores every few days. That’s why there are so few of them deployed around the country.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/05/low_income_neighborhoods_may_be_more_allergy_prone_partner/feed/ 5 Could California’s salmon make a comeback? http://www.salon.com/2013/06/02/could_californias_salmon_make_a_comeback_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/02/could_californias_salmon_make_a_comeback_partner/#comments Sun, 02 Jun 2013 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13314474 OnEarthJon Rosenfield and I bushwhack through the scrubby willows that line the American River east of Sacramento. The air is crisp this October morning, and the timing of our visit should be just right to watch California’s Chinook salmon as they return to where their lives began and spawn the next generation. Rosenfield, a biologist, works for a conservation group called the Bay Institute, and he wants me to witness an annual ritual that future generations might not have the opportunity to see.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/02/could_californias_salmon_make_a_comeback_partner/feed/ 15 Are streetcars the future of public transportation? http://www.salon.com/2013/05/16/why_is_the_streetcar_so_hot_right_now_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/16/why_is_the_streetcar_so_hot_right_now_partner/#comments Thu, 16 May 2013 18:18:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13300556 OnEarth When President Obama nominated Charlotte, North Carolina, Mayor Anthony Foxx to head the U.S. Department of Transportation last month, he cited among Foxx’s other relevant accomplishments “a new streetcar project that’s going to bring modern electric tram service to [Charlotte’s] downtown area.” All well and good. But honestly, if enthusiasm for downtown streetcar projects was a prerequisite for the job, the president could probably have compiled his short list of candidates simply by closing his eyes and aiming a dart at a wall-mounted map of the lower 48.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/16/why_is_the_streetcar_so_hot_right_now_partner/feed/ 22 TransCanada minister preaches the gospel of crude oil http://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/transcanada_minister_preaches_the_gospel_of_crude_oil_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/transcanada_minister_preaches_the_gospel_of_crude_oil_partner/#comments Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:56:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13272610 OnEarth Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.—Matthew 5:13

“I pastored the First Baptist Church out here in Polk for three and a half years,” Myron Stafford said. His distinct Southern drawl marked him as an outsider, but everything about him -- from his salt-and-pepper temples to his jeans and Western shirt -- made Stafford seem familiar to Terry Van Housen, a cattle feed yard operator in Stromsburg, Nebraska. Stromsburg isn’t far from Polk, where Stafford said he had filled in for the local minister, delivering Sunday sermons. Still, Van Housen couldn’t place him, so Stafford reminded Terry of a wedding he had performed recently, for Robbie Glasser’s son. Then he ticked off recent funerals he had presided over.

“I did three last year,” Stafford began. “I did Don’s funeral.”

“Don Hanquist?” Van Housen jumped in.

“Yeah. I did Mr. Recknor’s funeral.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/transcanada_minister_preaches_the_gospel_of_crude_oil_partner/feed/ 4 Sustainable pork farming is real http://www.salon.com/2013/04/14/meet_russ_kremer_americas_most_famous_sustainable_pork_farmer_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/14/meet_russ_kremer_americas_most_famous_sustainable_pork_farmer_partner/#comments Sun, 14 Apr 2013 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13269419 OnEarth Priest or pig farmer? Those were the only two callings that Russ Kremer ever considered. And really, it wasn’t even close.

Raised in the hamlet of Frankenstein in central Missouri, a few miles from where he still lives, Kremer wasn’t even old enough to attend grade school when his father gave him the job of bottle-feeding orphaned piglets in the house. By age six, he had graduated to tending sows and their litters. At eight, Kremer’s father handed him a recently weaned female and said, "She’s yours." Kremer named her Honeysuckle and raised her like a pet, often lying beside her in her stall. She gave birth to 15 young -- a challenge because she only had 13 nipples. Normally, at least three piglets would have died, but Kremer switched the babies on and off their mother during the critical early weeks. All 15 survived.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/14/meet_russ_kremer_americas_most_famous_sustainable_pork_farmer_partner/feed/ 26 Climate change means mutant poison ivy http://www.salon.com/2013/04/04/ivy_plants_grow_larger_due_to_climate_change_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/04/ivy_plants_grow_larger_due_to_climate_change_partner/#comments Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:47:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13261487 OnEarth Back in college, I developed an oozing poison ivy rash all over my neck and arms and had to go on steroids -- just because I inadvertently grazed the clothes of a friend who had gone tromping through the woods earlier that day. What’s worse, it happened right before the Dalai Lama visited my school. While my classmates were leaning forward in their folding chairs to capture his every syllable, I was shifting in my seat, clutching a bottle of calamine lotion, and desperately trying to look calm while the Lama talked about peace of mind -- something I only know from reading the transcript. It’s hard to listen while your skin is on fire.

So yeah, I’m pretty allergic to poison ivy. But a lot of people are -- 80 percent of the population reacts to the vine with welts and maddeningly itchy rashes. So the fact that poison ivy plants are getting bigger and more poisonous due to climate change isn’t exactly welcome news. But that’s precisely what’s happening; scientific research indicates that with higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the poison ivy plant grows larger, and its “oil” (a.k.a. the awful poisonous stuff) becomes more potent.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/04/ivy_plants_grow_larger_due_to_climate_change_partner/feed/ 6 Can cancer clusters be explained? http://www.salon.com/2013/03/31/can_cancer_clusters_be_explained_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/31/can_cancer_clusters_be_explained_partner/#comments Sun, 31 Mar 2013 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13256324 OnEarth Toms River, New Jersey, wasn’t polluted in a day. Ciby-Geigy and Union Carbide dumped their wastes in this small coastal town for decades before scores of local children were diagnosed with leukemia and cancers of the central nervous system. Dan Fagin’s "Toms River" tells the story of this chemical production and disposal, of snaking plumes of carcinogens, and of factory workers and residents who cried foul while government regulators and politicians turned their backs on mountains of circumstantial evidence.

The genius of "Toms River" is that readers pretty much know who did it -- but will the perpetrators get caught? And if they do, what are the consequences? The suspense builds as Fagin, who directs New York University’s Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program, traverses grand canyons of chemical, medical, and epidemiological scholarship, providing a surprisingly exciting tour through the yawning gap that separates cause from effect. "Toms River" will fill you with outrage: at the blatant abuses of the bad old days, the weak response of government and -- worst of all -- the knowledge that it could, and most likely will, happen again.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/31/can_cancer_clusters_be_explained_partner/feed/ 6 Bees to EPA: Where’s your sting? http://www.salon.com/2013/03/30/bees_to_epa_wheres_your_sting_partne/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/30/bees_to_epa_wheres_your_sting_partne/#comments Sat, 30 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13256366 The list of fruits, vegetables and field crops that rely on honeybees for pollination is truly astonishing: apples, avocados, carrots, cotton seed, peaches, pumpkins, strawberries, sunflowers … it goes on and on. There’s stuff on the list that I’m not fond of, like onions, and things I couldn’t live without, like peanuts (well, peanut butter, anyway). The same is surely true for you. So it should frighten us all to learn how badly honeybees fared last year, as a mysterious malady kept right on killing them.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/30/bees_to_epa_wheres_your_sting_partne/feed/ 7 EPA lets pesticides on the market untested http://www.salon.com/2013/03/28/epa_lets_pesticides_on_the_market_untested_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/28/epa_lets_pesticides_on_the_market_untested_partner/#comments Thu, 28 Mar 2013 18:45:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13254926 OnEarth You probably wouldn’t expect to find pesticides in your toothpaste or your gym socks, but they might be in there all the same. And the vast majority of those pesticides have made it into everyday products without adequate oversight by the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s because they’ve been approved through a bureaucratic loophole known as "conditional registration," which means they haven’t been fully tested to ensure that they pose no threat to human health or the environment, as required by U.S. law.

Most of us think of pesticides as the chemicals that get sprayed on weeds or used to kill rodents and bugs, but they’re actually found in everything from cosmetics to food containers, as well as antimicrobial textiles (such as the exercise shirt you might have worn to the gym this morning). By killing bacteria and other microorganisms, pesticides can help clothes resist stains or help containers keep food fresh longer. But some have also proven to cause health concerns in humans, kill trees, birds, bees, and fish, or do other unintended harm to the environment.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/28/epa_lets_pesticides_on_the_market_untested_partner/feed/ 7 The nuclear waste in that tuna roll http://www.salon.com/2013/03/17/why_arent_we_more_worried_about_nuclear_sushi_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/17/why_arent_we_more_worried_about_nuclear_sushi_partner/#comments Sun, 17 Mar 2013 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13242960 If you’re like me, you prefer your sushi slathered with just enough spicy wasabi to inflict a painfully pleasurable jolt of heat. But even if you’re not a fan of the bright green, searingly hot sushi-bar condiment, I’m guessing you’d still probably opt for it over a far less appetizing source of heat: radiation. Specifically, radioactive metals that were deposited into the sea near the coastal city of Fukushima, Japan, after the nuclear accident that took place there two years ago this week.
OnEarth

In two separate instances in 2011 and 2012, quantities of ionizing radiation were found in samples of bluefin tuna that had migrated from waters near the site of the Fukushima disaster, where the large fish spawn, to the southern California coastline, where they were eventually caught. In the first of these instances, Daniel Madigan, a marine biology graduate student at Stanford, bought 15 tuna steaks from dockside fishermen in San Diego and sent them off to a lab for testing. Madigan knew the migration patterns of the bluefin; at the time, which was less than six months after the accident, he was acting on little more than a hunch.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/17/why_arent_we_more_worried_about_nuclear_sushi_partner/feed/ 7 Forest Service decides to “let it burn” http://www.salon.com/2013/03/08/forest_service_is_shifting_the_controversial_firefighting_policy_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/08/forest_service_is_shifting_the_controversial_firefighting_policy_partner/#comments Fri, 08 Mar 2013 17:10:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13222972 Last year, as hot, dry conditions fueled blazes across the West, nearly 10 million acres of U.S. land were burned in what ended up being one of the costliest and most destructive wildfire seasons in the nation’s history. In the middle of all that, the U.S. Forest Service, which manages nearly 200 million acres of public land, didn’t do itself any favors when it reversed nearly two decades of national policy and ordered an “aggressive initial attack” on all blazes within the agency’s jurisdiction, no matter how small or remote.

 

OnEarthThis year, it appears the agency is moving back toward what ecologists and fire scientists have considered the best practices for almost 40 years now: fires that are sparked in remote wilderness, where they aren’t hurting anyone, should be allowed to burn. That’s because fire, as a natural part of the environment, is good for the ecosystem. Some essential animal and plant species actually thrive in fire-ravaged landscapes, and by thinning out excess timber and clearing out dry underbrush, small forest fires can help prevent large and deadlier blazes in the future.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/08/forest_service_is_shifting_the_controversial_firefighting_policy_partner/feed/ 5 The federal government isn’t coming for your suburban home http://www.salon.com/2013/03/07/the_conspiracy_around_agenda_21_and_the_abolition_of_private_property_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/07/the_conspiracy_around_agenda_21_and_the_abolition_of_private_property_partner/#comments Thu, 07 Mar 2013 18:19:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13221892 Pssst! Have you heard about Agenda 21? The secret plot to collectivize private property -- hatched by United Nations internationalists and midwifed by operatives ensconced within our own government -- all in the name of "ending sprawl" and "encouraging sustainability"? The seizure of suburban homes by jackbooted, gun-toting U.N. thugs? The involuntary relocation of displaced suburbanites to cramped dwellings in densely packed cities?

OnEarth No? Seriously? You haven't heard about any of this? Don't blame Glenn Beck.

His magazine, The Blaze, put Agenda 21 on the cover of its January/February 2012 issue; the article contained therein, its editors promised, would expose "the global scheme that has the potential to wipe out freedoms of all U.S. citizens." Beck then stretched this warning into a dystopian science fiction novel that came out last November titled (what else?) Agenda 21. In it, suburban and rural homeowners are stripped of their property and carted off to overcrowded cities, where they're forced to live in bunker-like apartments, wear government-issued uniforms, and generate power for the grid by walking on piezoelectric "energy boards."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/07/the_conspiracy_around_agenda_21_and_the_abolition_of_private_property_partner/feed/ 3 Save the wolverines! http://www.salon.com/2013/02/17/save_the_wolverines_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/17/save_the_wolverines_partner/#comments Sun, 17 Feb 2013 16:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13202915 OnEarth When 18th century zoologists gave the largest land-dwelling member of the weasel family the scientific name Gulo gulo -- which translates, not so roughly, to gluttonous glutton -- they were foreshadowing what would be mankind’s rather one-dimensional view of the creature we now know as the wolverine. The black-and-white, 30-pound, bushy-tailed scavenger has come to loom as a voracious, flesh-ripping hellion in our popular imagination -- largely, it seems, because we don’t know much about it.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/17/save_the_wolverines_partner/feed/ 1 Town board imposes gag order on residents concerned with fracking http://www.salon.com/2013/02/14/town_board_imposes_gag_order_on_residents_concerned_with_fracking_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/14/town_board_imposes_gag_order_on_residents_concerned_with_fracking_partner/#comments Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:32:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13200034 OnEarth During my 12-year career as a newspaper reporter, I spent thousands of hours sitting through city council meetings, zoning board hearings, property tax appeals, school board work sessions, and just about every other kind of attention-sapping municipal meeting you could possibly imagine. (It wasn’t all bad: I met my wife at one.) At these meetings, it wasn’t uncommon for the same topics to come up over and over again, frequently with the same people making the same points about the same issues that everyone in attendance has heard a million times before. (Think “Parks and Rec” without any laughs.) So I sympathize, perhaps more than I should, with elected officials and public servants who would like to find a way to make topics they’ve heard about and debated endlessly just … go ... away.

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