Carefully Cleaning Up the Garbage at Los Alamos

In Los Alamos there is a project going on to clean up a six acre dump site that is sixty-five years old. This dump site has become part of the six million dollar stimulus deal to try and clean up toxic waste from the nuclear arms race. Almost 73000 people have signed up to get jobs to clean up Los Alamos. Toxic waste was dumped here during the Manhattan project so there is a need to try and clean up the area.

It is good that the government is worried about trying to clean up an area so that there is no longer waste there. It shows that the government cares about having a good clean environment and they want it to be clean.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/us/24alamos.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Michael Cooper

October 23, 2009

Energy Star Appliances May Not All Be Efficient, Audit Finds

The energy deparment has finished there audit and they found that some manufactures that put the energy star label on there products may not have meet the requirments for it. This means that companies are falsly putting the labels on there products. People have been buying the energy star products to save money and they will now figure out that they may have not of been saving any money at all. In 2007 the government said that they would do a check to make sure that everyting with the sticker was truely diserving of it. Now there is a new thing out that will find the best 5 percent of the energy star products.
I think that it is bad that companies are lying to make it so that more people will buy there products. The govenrment should do checks on this to make sure that businesses will not be able to pull this off.
Matthew L. Wald
October 18, 2009

Local Assaults on the Global Climate Problem

This month the mayor of Mesa Arizona became the 1000 leader to sign a climate change bill that was presented at the United States Conference of Mayors. In this treaty the mayors have agreed to cut there emissions with the help from the Kyoto treaty that was sign by the United States. Many cities will not be able to meet the goal that was set by the treaty but it is still an attempt to make things better in our large and small cities. Metric cities consume 50 percent of more of the planets energy resources and contribute to as much as 80 percent to greenhouse gas emissions.

I think that it is good that cities in the United Sates are trying to contribute to cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that they put out. Also it is good becaues more cities will see what they are doing and they will do the same thing and that will really help in the cutting of greenhouse gases the United States.

Tom Zeller Jr.

October 18, 2009

It’s Fish vs. Lawns, Not North vs. South

In the Bay Area counties in California people have been using water from canals around there homes. Because the people need the water to wash there cars and water there lawns these canals have been dammed for the people. The California legislation have been arguing to try and find a solution to save these canals and the fish that live in them. But the people in these areas are fighting so that they can keep there rights to using the water from this area and to keep the dams that where put in.

I think that it is bad that we are damming off areas of canals so that people can get there water. They should be able to limit there water supplies so that they will no longer need to dam the rivers and canals off. They should stop putting new dams in and just keep the ones that they already have in.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/science/earth/18sfpolitics.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Daniel Weintraub

October 17, 2009

Walruses Suffer Substantial Losses as Sea Ice Erodes

Walruses have just recovered from an half century of being over hunted when a new even greater threat now threatens there existence. There is a decrease of coastal sea ice that walruses normally lay on so they are now migrating to the rocky shores of the United States and Russia. With the sea ice melting the walruses have become very cramped on the shores where they are now going to. Because of the over crowded shores a large amount of walruses have been found dead do to being trampled and crushed.
I think that it is bad that because of humans causing global warming that we are effecting other animals and slowly killing them do to the raising temperatures. We need to try and reverse the effects of global warming so we can save the populations of animals that have been effected by global warming.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/science/earth/03walrus.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
Andrew C. Revkin
October 2, 2009

U.S. Blocks Oil Drilling at 60 Sites in Utah

The Department of Interior stopped oil drilling in sixty out of seventy seven drilling sites located in Utah. The seventy seven sites cover around 100000 acres of land in eastern and southern Utah. Drilling for oil in these spots has a potential of harming the wildlife in the area where they are drilling and had to be stopped. Conservation groups had sued the companies in charge and hope that they will soon stop drilling in all of the seventy seven areas.
I think that it is good that the new Obama administration is trying to do things to save the environment and the wildlife in it by undoing things that where put in place through the Bush administration. Also if there is no reason to drill for oil we should not do it because it takes a lot of land to do it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/science/earth/09leases.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
John M. Broder
October 8, 2009