War, science denial and Fox News. It’s what’s going on in the world, but it’s not especially merry, merry. If you’re feeling anxious about the eco conversation turning an ugly shade of green at the family Christmas dinner, rest easy. It’s not all doom and gloom. (Besides, there will be plenty of time post-feast to take on Uncle Ulysses on Wikileaks, your sister Sue on why being green doesn’t actually make you a commie, and cousin Clive on the South Atlantic Gyre.)

So, for your dining pleasure, I submit to you three news items everyone can be happy about:

1. Good for flora…

How is this for a dream headline: “Amazon deforestation in dramatic decline, official figures show.”

This is from the Guardian, which reported this summer that data from satellites shows that large areas of forest destruction was about halved in the period between August 2009 and May 2010, compared with the same period a year earlier (to about 930 square miles from about 1860 square miles). The story notes that the Brazilian environment agency, Ibama, said “the drop was due to the increased use of satellite data to spot the felling of trees and new tactics to deter loggers, including ending their ability to hide under cloud cover.” Along these lines, we recently reported here that Google’s announcement this month of its Earth Engine will allow for even more monitoring and measurement of changes in the Earth’s environment. With its eye in the sky, the system will “function like a watchdog camera, supporting the development of ‘monitor, report and verify’ (MRV) efforts to stop global deforestation.” Go, trees!

2. Good for fauna…

Things are looking up for some pretty cool endangered species – you know, the sexy ones that get lots of press and for which even your most “who-cares” relatives have a soft spot. Consider first the mountain gorilla, the number of which in national parks of three African countries has risen by 26 percent in the last seven years, says a recent census. Next, how about those tigers, whose on-the-brink status has led to a recent summit among the 13 nations where the animals still exist in the wild. The takeway was $300 million raised to save the animals (including a cool million from actor Leonardo DiCaprio), as well as agreement to attempt to double their number by 2022. And finally, there’s the canary in our global coalmine – the polar bear – for which The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has just designated 87,000 square miles along the north coast of Alaska as protected “critical habitat” as part of a settlement in a lawsuit filed by environmental groups (although a lump of coal to the Obama administration for declaring polar bears merely “threatened” today).

3. And good for us…

Hooray for the home team on the emissions front. As a result in an increase in United States fuel economy standards, a new EPA report is showing a 14 percent per mile drop in carbon dioxide emissions over the last six years, and a 16 percent drop in gasoline use, with a rise of 3.1 miles per gallon to 22.5. In fact, “C02 emissions have decreased while fuel economy has increased every year since 2005, reversing the trend of the previous eight years.” This doesn’t mean we’re all to breathe easy and lose our discipline on this issue, but good news is good news.

So there. Eat, drink and be environmentally merry. A little more champagne, please! Go ahead and top off the glass.

Special thanks to the Great News Network (GNN) for reminding me that all’s not dire on the environmental front.

Images: Sara&Joachim, Johan J.Ingles-Le Nobel, wwarby, ^riza^

Eyes on the prize: Google announces ‘Earth Engine’

Offering scientists and conservationists a better look-see at Mama Earth, Google Labs unveiled its Google Earth Engine yesterday at the International Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico. The product puts an “unprecedented amount of satellite imagery and data – current and historical – online for the first time,” says Google, allowing for monitoring and measurement of changes in the Earth’s environment. The images are designed specifically for environmental protection use, providing information on the “locations and extent of global forests, detecting how our forests are changing over time, directing resources for disaster response or water resource mapping,” among other data. One important value of the system is that it will function like a watchdog camera, supporting the development of “monitor, report and verify” (MRV) efforts to stop global deforestation. The company released an example image, generated in collaboration with Mexico’s National Forestry Commission, of a forest cover and water map of Mexico which is the finest-scale to date. The company says the map required 15,000 hours of computation, but was completed in less than a day on Google Earth Engine using 1,000 computers.

Happy birthday EPA!

Now more than ever is a good time to celebrate the Environmental Protection Agency. As the mostly on-our-side government agency is turning 40, it’s coming under severe attacks from a hostile new (corporate-sponsored) Congress, and other science and climate-change deniers around the the world. GreenBiz has it right when it says: “a testament to the scale and scope of the EPA’s successes over the past 40 years that they’ve faded into the background, or been woven into the fabric of daily life.” However, any take-it-for-granted attitude would be a grave mistake right now given the current political climate, and it’s good that sites like Green For All (ThankYouEPA.com), are out there helping to get the word out. There’s an informative quick take, too, from the Aspen Institute in a 10 reasons we love ‘em format. Among the highlights from the agency’s 40 years are banning the widespread use of DDT, addressing the acid rain problem, championing the reuse of waste, taking the lead on reducing vehicle emissions, cleaning up our water supply and being a  general conduit for public information.

Strange life forms found in (where else?) California!

While you would figure NASA would spend a lot time looking up, the organization just announced that one of its astrobiology research efforts that’s focused way down under one of California’s weirdest lakes has led to discovery that folks are saying will fundamentally shift the way we define life – and vastly expand the playing field in terms of how we look for life on other planets. These researchers have discovered the first known microorganism able to “thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The microorganism, which lives in Mono Lake, substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in the backbone of its DNA and other cellular components.” Quoted in the NY Daily News, Mary Voytek, director of NASA’s astrobiology program, says, ”It’s terrestrial life – but not life as we know it.” The story adds that “all life discovered so far, from teeny amoebas to enormous elephants, are composed of combinations of the same six elements: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur and phosphorus,” but the new bacteria (its catchy name is GFAJ-1) can live without any phosphorus and instead uses arsenic to build cells. Why do we care? “The implication is that we still don’t know everything there is to know about what might make a planet habitable,” says another NASA scientist. “Maybe we’ll be able to find ET now.”

Images: Google, jessica.diamond, NASA

Lust for Apple’s iPad reached a fevered pitch the second the company allowed pre-orders online (March 12th). We anticipate that the iPad will remain a trending topic on every corner of the internet, as sales begin at Best Buy and Apple stores April 3rd.

Greenpeace has been using iPad buzz to get people thinking about a need for greener information technology.

Are they really trying to take the wind out of Apple’s iPad sails, nee sales? Or is it reasonable to ask Apple fan-girls and -boys to think hard before they buy another wireless gewgaw, with another battery and batch of peripherals and accessories? Or for that matter, to ask us all how many times a day we really need to check our Facebook and Twitter feeds.

A March 30th Greenpeace statement cited research that predicts a triple increase in electricity consumption by data centers and telecommunication networks in the next decade. It called on computing giants, especially Apple, Microsoft, IBM and Google, to “get [their] carbon footprint under control.”

While Greenpeace views the IT industry with a skeptical eye, cloud computing insiders like Sherrie Wu, vice president of product development at AirSet in Berkeley, California thinks the trend of cloud computing – doing everything online, including storing files, accessing and using applications, versus downloading them and working from a hard drive – is already doing more good than harm, environmentally.

Wu explained, “Cloud computing like we offer at AirSet lets office teams collaborate on documents online in an integrated environment. Team members or even family members’ access to information, with cloud computing no longer relies on printed or email copies. Teams can keep their schedules, contacts, files, and all the other digital data that are important in one secure place, again instead of printing or emailing.”

Reduced paper consumption and fewer logins to get to the information you need sounds great. But with all of the electricity consumption, can cloud computing, including the iPad, have a silver-green lining?

Get informed and weigh in below, or Tweet your thoughts our way @ecosalon

Basic Reading:

Official iPad Product Specs

“Apple won’t say how many iPads it has sold in advance of their debut Saturday, and it’s hard to predict how many enthusiasts will camp overnight and swamp Apple stores when the doors open Saturday at 9 a.m., as they did for last summer’s launch of the most recent version of the iPhone”¦” – An Associated Press story by Jessica Mintz anticipating a successful iPad launch.

“The iPad”¦relies on cloud computing – a system where information and core processes are accessed through a network, rather than on a local server. The iPad is only one instance of this type of operation. Google is another, and the practice is increasingly common”¦.” – A Guardian UK story by Vincent Bevins discussing the environmental benefits and potential drawbacks of cloud computing.

“Apple has indicated that the iPad is highly recyclable and free of harmful chemicals. The likely long-term environmental impact of the iPad is nonetheless ambiguous at best”¦ it seems [like] another device that adds to our modern electronic clutter and feeds into the cannibalistic trend of shrinking product lifecycles.” – Change.org writer Giovannia Mejia discusses electronics makers’ use of “conflict” minerals, and compares the IT industry to the diamond industry.

Further Resources:

IPad Accessories Chart on Testfreaks.com, a design blog.

A feature story about Seton Hill University’s Plan to Issue Freshman iPads and MacBooks.

The iPad reviewed from a regular consumer’s and the techie’s point-of-view, by New York Times’ David Pogue.

This is the latest installment of EcoMeme, a column featuring eco news, tech and business highlights by columnist Lora Kolodny.

Image by: curiouslee

Google’s annual most-searched-terms report, In The News page. Keeping It Green rankings were based on search terms within the subcategory of “green energy,” the report notes with an asterisk.

No offense, solar and renewable energy, but there’s more to the green movement than y’all! That’s why we ferreted out other green keywords and concepts we could find charting throughout the U.S. Zeitgeist 2009 report.

Sticking to the news page, under the category of In the Economy, “cash for clunkers” charted at number two of 10 terms, behind the all encompassing “crisis,” while “green” charted at the eighth most searched, economy-related term in Google News. In last year’s regional searches in 2009 public transit searches ranked in the top 10, including BART schedules at nine for San Francisco, the MTA Trip Planner and Hopstop.com at three and six for New York City, the Madison, Wisconsin Metro schedule at six for that region, and in Chicago, at two and four, the CTA bus planner and RTA Trip Planner.

Finally, on a page of household-related searches, food and drink category, the Acai Berry topped the list.

Zeitgeist reports don’t reflect the same categories year over year, exactly. And as search and business guru John Batelle griped in his own blog on Tuesday, results didn’t reflect December 2009 searches on Google.

But, let’s hope they’ll make Green a permanent Zeitgeist feature, and help sway the “collective consciousness” to the environmentally responsible side.

Basic Reading:

A slideshow at the Huffington Post reflects the Zeitgeist 2009 results.

EcoMeme, a column featuring eco news, tech and business highlights by Lora Kolodny.

Could it be that astronauts of the future will be able to eat fresh and green while on the moon?

Sounds improbable, but US scientists involved in creating the first moon “greenhouse” think it”Ëœs possible. Paragon, an Arizona-based company, has been working with NASA and Odyssey Moon Ltd (the first contender in the Google Lunar X Prize) to create the “lunar oasis” – a miniature greenhouse for the moon.

This sealed bell jar-shaped greenhouse, encased in a 1.5 foot tall triangular aluminum frame, has been designed to land safely and remain intact on the lunar surface.

Plans are afoot to have the “lunar oasis” launched into space by Odyssey Moon, thus allowing for plant growth experiments to be conducted. Growing plants from seeds on the moon is a significant step forward in looking at life beyond planet earth.

Images: joiseyshowaa, onorbit

If you were to update the list of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, the internet would almost certainly make the cut. With the exception of antibiotics I can think of very few other 20th century inventions that have changed society and people’s lives for good quite so profoundly.

Yet our digital addiction is also taking its toll on the environment. Coming up with hard numbers on a global scale is quite a challenge but that doesn’t stop people trying. A few days ago a UK Sunday Times article reported a surprising calculation that searching on Google – one of the most powerful web tools ever – uses far more energy than the rest of the web. Based on some publicly available information and a bit of guesswork, the article claims that it emits 7g of carbon per Google search – half the amount of energy needed to boil your kettle for a cup of tea. With more than 200 million web searches daily across the world, that’s a lot of tea. Apparently that compares with just 0.02g of carbon per second of browsing an ordinary website.

When I saw the article I was intrigued but cautious – the numbers are estimates and cannot be verified since Google is notoriously secretive and won’t even reveal the location of its servers. Also, I knew that it probably doesn’t adjust for a lot of variables such as the fact that Google is thought to buy a lot of machines and run them slowly (they do this for a techie reason but it’s also greener as it makes them chew up less power than would otherwise occur). Since then the story has been partially debunked – Google itself has rubbished the claim and the physicist quoted in the story says he said nothing of the sort and anyway he drinks coffee, not tea.

So phew, we can all breathe a sigh of relief and dismiss it as little more than an alarmist storm in a tea (or coffee) cup?

Perhaps not. There is a case for taking this opportunity to think about the carbon footprint of our computer habits. What we do know is that since 2007 the information technology and communications industry has emitted more greenhouse gas than aviation globally – and this figure is growing.

Computers and the internet are green when it’s replacing an offline activity that would also consume energy – such as printing a newspaper or magazine or driving to the shops. However, when it’s additional activity it’s a different story. Increasingly, we get our entertainment online or we might look up an online dictionary or encyclopaedia rather than use the one already on the shelf.

People often assume that reading things online is greener than reading something printed on dead trees. The reality is that it depends on how long you read something for because of the energy consumption. If you read the newspaper for less than 30 minutes a day, it’s greener to read it online, but beyond that it’s greener to read it in print, according to Swedish researchers. Reading it on an e-reader such as Amazon’s Kindle is greener still – but that’s purely in energy consumption and doesn’t look at the entire life cycle of the gadget.

I’m not saying that we should turn our backs on such a wonderful and useful tool as the internet – EcoSalon is a website, after all! But perhaps cutting back on our dependence is not such a bad idea – and don’t forget to turn your computer off (or set it to ‘sleep’ or ‘hibernate’ mode) if you’re leaving it for any length of time too.

Image: blupic