Billions of $$$ in advertising budgets to convince us that bottled water is a normal way to consume H two O. Here is a quote from a Susan Wellington, former vice president of marketing at PepsiCo:
When we are done, tap water will be relegated to showers and washing dishes…
But consider this:
Bottled water costs over 1000 times more than tap water per fluid ounce.
Bottled water uses over 2000 times more energy to produce and deliver.
The purity of tap water is far more regulated than that of bottled water.
Most bottled water sold today is simply tap water that has been filtered and then bottled.
The 2011 GBBC will take place Friday, February 18, through Monday, February 21. Please join us!
The Great Backyard Bird Count is an annual four-day event that engages bird watchers of all ages in counting birds to create a real-time snapshot of where the birds are across the continent. Anyone can participate, from beginning bird watchers to experts. It takes as little as 15 minutes on one day, or you can count for as long as you like each day of the event. It’s free, fun, and easy—and it helps the birds.
150 WORDS FROM YOU CAN MAKE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EXTINCTION AND SURVIVAL.
Mexican gray wolves need your help to stop Congress from taking away the safety net of the Endangered Species Act. Thanks to this important environmental law, we still have wolves in New Mexico and Arizona playing their part in the balance of nature. Just 50 Mexican wolves remain in the wild today. While their numbers have improved modestly in the last year, they are teetering on the brink of extinction. Now is not the time for Congress to remove protections for imperiled Mexican wolves and open the door for state wildlife agencies like the Arizona Game and Fish Department to kill wolves when they inconvenience livestock owners. Wildlife officials in Wyoming have said they would allow wolves to be shot, trapped, and poisoned on sight. The state of Idaho’s official position is that there should be zero wolves in the state. Montana wants to institute a wolf hunting season. If the bills introduced by Congressman Rehberg and Senator Hatch or similar bills pass, the fate of gray wolves will be decided by state agencies that say they would kill them. This is like putting banks in charge of financial reform. This is the greatest threat to the Mexican wolf’s survival since its first extinction in the wild around 1980, when the last seven were protected and later bred in captivity. The nearly extinct lobo was reintroduced because of the Endangered Species Act. That’s why people are calling these bills what they really are: wolf extinction bills. And they put more than wolves in peril -they threaten all wildlife and the Endangered Species Act itself. Never before has Congress stripped ESA protection from a single species – this sets a dangerous precedent to let any animal go extinct based on politics rather than the sound science the ESA requires. You can tell your members of Congress, your state government, and hundreds to thousands of your fellow citizens to stop wolf extinction bills with one short letter, if you send it to a newspaper. Surveys show that the letters page is one of the most closely read parts of the paper. It’s also the page policy-makers look to as a barometer of public opinion. If you mention AZ Game and Fish and/or Senators Kyl, McCain, Udall, and Bingaman in your letter, the agency or Senator’s staff will most likely see that letter during a regular scan of the media.
New Moon occurs on the 2nd at 9:31 pm Eastern Standard Time. … On the evening of the 3rd you’ll have the rare opportunity to sight a very young crescent Moon. If you look about five degrees above the west-southwest horizon at around 6:00 pm EST you may be able to spot the 21-hour-old crescent as a thin, hair-like gash of light against the twilight sky. A very clear atmosphere and an unobstructed view of the horizon are essential to accomplish this feat, and a pair of binoculars will make it a little easier.
The Moon brightens the late night and early morning skies this week, with Full Moon occurring on the 19th at 4:21 pm Eastern Standard Time. The year’s first Full Moon is popularly known as the Moon After Yule or the Old Moon in traditional sky lore. Like the Full Moon in December it occurs at a high northerly declination and because of this often appears particularly bright.
January 12th marks the end of the doldrums of winter. For the past week we have been experiencing the latest sunrises of the year here in Washington, but each day from now until the summer solstice the Sun will come up a little earlier each day. We experienced the earliest sunsets back in early December. By the end of this week Old Sol will be setting half an hour later than he did back then.
The 21st also marks the beginning of the astronomical season of winter, with the Winter Solstice occurring at 6:38 pm on the 21st. This is the moment when the Sun reaches its southernmost declination in the sky and we experience the year’s shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere. At this time the Sun stands directly over the Tropic of Capricorn over the remote islands of Kiribati in the South Pacific Ocean. Gradually over the next few days, then more rapidly as the new year begins, Old Sol will climb back toward more northern climes. Spring is surely on the way!
In the Fishlake National Forest in Utah, a giant has lived quietly for the past 80,000 years. The Trembling Giant, or Pando, is a enormous grove of quaking aspens that takes the “forest as a single organism†metaphor and literalizes it: the grove really is a single organism. Each of the approximately 47,000 or so trees in the grove is genetically identical and all the trees share a single root system. While many trees spread through flowering and sexual reproduction, quaking aspens usually reproduce asexually, by sprouting new trees from the expansive lateral root of the parent. The individual trees aren’t individuals, but stems of a massive single clone, and this clone is truly massive. Spanning 107 acres and weighing 6,615 tons, Pando was once thought to be the world’s largest organism (now usurped by thousand-acre fungal mats in Oregon), and is almost certainly the most massive. In terms of other superlatives, the more optimistic estimates of Pando’s age have it as over one million years old, which would easily make it the world’s oldest living organism.
Unfortunately, the future of the giant appears grim. … [read the rest at the link]
11/12/2010 – Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) is hoping to pass a package of public lands and wilderness bills during the lame-duck session of Congress.
Bingaman’s panel has sent more than 60 bills to the floor this session that would create new national parks, monuments, wilderness areas and wildlife sanctuaries. Now he’s hoping to bundle them into an omnibus measure for Senate passage before the 111th Congress adjourns, spokesman Bill Wicker confirmed today.
Mexican gray wolves need your help to stop Congress from taking away the safety net of the Endangered Species Act. Thanks to this important environmental law, we still have wolves in New Mexico and Arizona playing their part in the balance of nature. 
Pando, the Trembling Giant located in Sigurd Cemetery, Utah, US | Atlas Obscura | Curious and Wondrous Travel Destinations