10 Ways to Green Your Day Off

 

1. Visit a farmer's market

Since you have some free time on your hands, make a trip to that unexplored farmer's market you've been eying. Buying local and sustainably-farmed produce dramatically decreases the footprint of your nightly meals, and these picks tend to be healthier and tastier, too. From heirloom veggies to homemade hot sauce, you never know what you might find from farmers and vendors in your area.
Not sure where to find a farmer's market near you? Just punch your zip code into the USDA or Local Harvest databases, and you'll get a list of choices in your neighborhood.

2. Explore your neighborhood

If you're ever stumped for a green activity, the best thing you can do is get outside. Spending time outdoors helps you remember why protecting the planet is so important, and you'll also save some cash on your electric bill, as you won't have to use energy for heating and lighting your home.
So, pile on the winter gear, and head to a local pocket park, botanical garden or uncharted walking path to experience something new in your town. Don't know where to go? Head to your town or municipality's Website to find listings of nearby parks, outdoor events and more. Once you get home, get cozy and enjoy one of our yummy coffee shop-free winter beverages to warm up.

3. Volunteer

Take a page from Dr. King's book and do a little volunteering in your spare time. Lend a hand at a local community garden or animal shelter, or take part in park or beach cleanup.
Most municipalities have a calendar of upcoming volunteer days on their Website. But if you don't see an event that strikes your fancy, a simple Google search with your town's name and the words "Martin Luther King Day (or Presidents' Day) volunteering" should point you in the right direction.

4. Relax the natural way

Planning a day full of much-needed TLC? Skip the pricey eco spa, and do a little relaxing right in your own home. Dim the lights, spark up some all-natural candles and test out one of these five luxe spa treatments that you can do yourself on the cheap. Most treatments cost less than $10!
And if the winter weather has been taking a toll on your bod, this is a great time to get your fix on. Check out our DIY guide to curing common winter woes like dry skin, chapped lips and frizzy hair using common pantry ingredients.

5. Do some winter weatherizing

If you've noticed a few drafts in your home, apartment or dorm room, your day off is the perfect time to make things a little more comfortable (and energy-efficient!). Start by taking a walk through all of your rooms, and make note of any drafty areas. Then, use our weatherization guides for homeowners, apartment-dwellers and dorm residents to fix the problem.
Also, take a moment to check out your heating system. Make sure the exterior of your system is clean and free of obstructions, and change the air filter if it looks dirty. If you live in an apartment or dorm room, speak to your landlord or RA about heating system maintenance, as an inefficient system can suck up loads of energy and cost you or your school big bucks on utilities.

6. Start a reuse project

Recycling your household waste is a great step towards sustainability, but why not reuse some of your throw-aways instead? Check out these five super-elegant decor items made from waste, or craft with the kids using recyclables for an afternoon of eco fun.
Want to take your day-off project beyond crafting? Check out our 12 crazy ways to go DIY in every room of the house, from homemade cheese to super-functional storage.
SEE: 15 Reuse Projects to Try in 2012

7. Do a packaging purge

Whether the food packaging in your home is recyclable or not, it's always best to find ways to reuse it before tossing it in the bin. Go through your pantry and transfer dry items from their original packaging into reusable storage containers, like these 100 percent recycled containers from Preserve.
Once you have all your packaging in the same place, consult our food packaging reuse guide to find ways to repurpose it. And take note of the products that the majority of your packaging waste came from. Can you buy any of these materials in bulk to cut back on waste? How about switching to homemade? A little planning could mean emptier trash cans all year long.
READ: 5 Absurdly Over-Packaged Foods

8. Stock up on bulk

Buying your favorite dry foods in bulk results in a huge reduction in packaging waste. But it can be hard to fit a trip to the bulk-foods store into your schedule. On your day off, make a list of the most common dry items you use in the kitchen: cereal for the kids, rice, beans and pasta for nightly dinners and nuts and dried fruits for healthy snacks.
Head to the bulk-foods store with plenty of reusable bags, and stock up on your favorites sans-packaging. Transfer your items into large reusable containers when you get home to keep them from getting stale.
READ: 5 Reasons to Bulk Up on Food Purchases

9. Choose a veg-based meal

Vegetarian Weeks have been steadily gaining popularity in recent years. But you don't need to cut out meat for a whole week to make a difference. Eating just one vegan or vegetarian meal each week will save about 35 pounds of meat a year, amounting to 84,000 gallons of water, 245 pounds of grain and 15.5 gallons of gasoline.
Wary about bland and boring vegetarian food? Our library of recipes, including exotic international cuisine, tasty low-cal delights and compostable classics, is sure to change your mind.

10. Plan a green getaway

Having something to look forward to can get you through all those tough weeks at work or school. So, spend some time planning an eco-friendly vacation for yourself this winter. Our go-to guides will help you plan a romantic, kid-free vacation with your sweetie, pick the right location for a family getaway or find a nearby weekend retreat.

Source: www.earth911.com

Simple Actions to save Energy and Go Green

One Change leads to another. When it comes to saving money and cutting your hydro bill, switching to energy efficiency light bulbs is just the start. Here are some more simple actions to help you conserve energy and save money.

Replace your old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs with energy-saving CFL and LED bulbs
Compact fluorescent light (CFL) and LED bulbs use about 75% less energy than old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs and last much longer. For every bulb you swap, you can cut greenhouse gas emissions and save money on your energy bill over the lifetime of the bulb. Click here for information on CFL recycling in North America.

Plug your electronics into power strips and shut them off when not in use
Fight what’s known as phantom or vampire power. Your computer, printer, TV, DVD player, stereo, kitchen appliances and other electronics are still sucking power while you have them shut off. In North America, 75% of the electricity used to power home electronics and appliances is consumed while the products are turned off! Switching them off with a power strip when you’re not using them will cut all power to the appliances and save you loads of money on wasted energy—as much as 15% of your monthly bill!

Stay cool with a ceiling fan
Instead of A/C consider installing an ENERGY STAR-qualified ceiling fan, which can cost as little as 10 cents a month in energy. You can even save money in the winter. Reverse the direction of your ceiling fan motor so that cool air is pushed up towards the ceiling, drawing warm air down into the room. Rather than cold floors and warm ceilings, you’ll have a more even temperature throughout the room. Now, can your air conditioner do that?

Install a programmable thermostat and lower it
Install a programmable thermostat to lower your heat when you don’t need it, for example when you’re out of the house and you could save up to $65 a year. Turning the thermostat down just 1 degree C can save you 2% on your heating bill.

Run a Full Dishwasher
By using an ENERGY STAR qualified dishwasher, running it when it’s full, and using an economy setting helps reduce the amount of hot water and energy used to clean your dishes. As much as 80% of the energy your dishwasher uses goes to heat water. So the less hot water you use to wash your dishes, the more energy and money you save. For an additional 10% energy savings, select the no-heat dry cycle (or simply open the door) to air dry your dishes.

Install low-flow showerheads and faucet aerators
Get an adequate flow for less dough! Installing low-flow showerheads and low-flow aerators on your kitchen and bathroom faucets is the single most effective water conservation action you can do for your home. Inexpensive and simple to install, low-flow shower heads and faucet aerators can reduce your home water consumption as much as 50%, and reduce your energy cost of heating the water also by as much as 50%. You likely won’t even notice a drop in water pressure—just in your water and energy bills (to the tune of over $150 a year)!

Air dry your laundry
Did you know that your clothes dryer is the second biggest electricity-using appliance in your home (after the refrigerator)? Why not air dry your cloths on a clothesline or drying rack to save as much as $100 on your electricity bill each year.


Wash your laundry in cold water
85 – 90% of the energy used to wash your clothes is used to heat the water, so why not switch to cold to save money and energy. While you’re at it, wait until you have a full load before starting the washing machine.


Source: http://www.onechange.org

Canadian trio invent ‘most energy-efficient’ light bulb

 

There’s a new energy efficient lightbulb making waves, and not only was it invented by Canadians, but it’s about the funkiest looking illumination device we’ve seen since the lava lamp.

Introducing the Nanolight.

The flashy device promises to produce as much light a 100-watt incandescent bulb while using only an eighth of the power, reports the CBC.

Its makers are three University of Toronto graduates, and they took to crowdfunding website Kickstarter to get the project off the ground. Gimmy Chu, Tom Rodinger, Christian Yan, who all met at a solar car-building competition in 2005, were hoping to raise a paltry $20,000. They quickly blew past that marker and are currently sitting on $141,911 in pledges after less than a month of fundraising.

Make no mistake — these bulbs aren’t cheap. A $30 donation will get you a single 10 watt bulb, while a $45 will get you the 12 watt model. But NanoLight’s makers promise that users will quickly earn back that initial investment in electricity savings. The blub will last for 25-30 years based on three hours a day usage.

The NanoLight's genius is in its complex circuit board design, which is implanted with numerous tiny LED lights facing in different directions.

(Credit: Nanolight)

According to its makers, the NanoLight is superior to the current energy efficient LED lights on the market for a number of reasons.

For one, it lights in all directions, something current LED lights cannot do. It also produces the equivalent of 100 watts of light, something that is still relatively rare among LED lights. The Nano Light is also reportedly one of the coolest on the market, in that it won’t overheat when used in an enclosed fixture the way many other LED bulbs will.

Those interested in getting their paws on the first generation of these groundbreaking new bulbs need look no further than NanoLight’s Kickstarter page, which will be accepting pledges until Friday, March 8, 2013.

Source: http://ca.shine.yahoo.com

 

The Great Man-Made River Project: Libya’s Achievement

September 1st is the anniversary of an event little known in the West. Today, over twenty years on, the people who deserve to be celebrating it, are instead enduring a war. Yet the achievement changed their lives greatly and merits recognition. A tap was turned on in Libya. From an enormous ancient aquifer, deep below the Sahara Desert, fresh water began to flow north through 1200 kilometres of pipeline to the coastal areas where 90% of Libyan people live, delivering around one million cubic metres of pure water per day to the cities of Benghazi and Sirte. Crowds gathered in the desert for the inaugural ceremony. Phase I of the largest civil engineering venture in the world, the Great Man-made River Project, had been completed. It was during the 1953 search for new oilfields in southern Libya that the ancient water aquifers were first discovered, four huge basins with estimated capacities each ranging between 4,800 and 20,000 cubic kms. Yes, that’s cubic kilometres. There is so much water that Libya had recently also offered it to Egypt for their needs.

After the bloodless revolution of 1969, also on September 1, the new government nationalised the oil companies and spent much of the oil revenues to harness the supply of fresh water from the desert aquifers by putting in hundreds of bore wells. Muammar Gaddafi’s dream was to provide fresh water for everyone, and to turn the desert green, making Libya self-sufficient in food production. He established large farms and encouraged the people to move to the desert. But many preferred life on the coast and wouldn’t go.  So Gaddafi next conceived a plan to bring the water to the people. Feasibility studies were carried out by the Libyan government in the seventies and in 1983 the Great Man-made River Authority was set up. The project began the following year, fully funded by the Libyan government. The almost $30 billion cost to date has been without the need of any international loans. Nor has there been any charge on the people, who do not pay for their reticulated water, which is regarded in Libya to be a human right and therefore free.GMMRP figures are staggering. The ‘rivers’ are a 4000-kilometre network of 4m diameter lined concrete pipes, buried below the desert sands to prevent evaporation. There are 1300 wells, 500,000 sections of pipe, 3700 kms of haul roads, and 250 million cubic metres of excavation. All material for the project was locally manufactured. Large reservoirs provide storage, and pumping stations control the flow into the cities. The pipeline first reached Tripoli in 1996 and when Phase V is completed, the water will allow about 155,000 hectares of land to be cultivated.  To achieve all this, construction work was tendered and many overseas companies, including from US, Korea, Turkey, Britain, Japan and Germany took up contracts for each Phase, and some have worked for decades in Libya. The project has not been without problems, including faulty materials and financial difficulties within some of the contracting firms. Since the NATO air attacks on Libya began in March, most foreign nationals have returned home, including those employed on the hydro scheme. The final phase of the Great Man-made River Project is stalled. Libyan people put their hearts into work on the GMMR from the beginning, and years ago took on most of the managerial and technical positions as their expert knowledge increased, with government policy encouraging their education, training and employment. They proudly call the GMMRP “the eighth wonder of the world.”(UN Human Development Index figures for Libya since the beginning of Gaddafi’s influence can be found here http://bit.ly/b4ItsI )The project was so well recognised internationally that UNESCO in 1999 accepted Libya’s offer to fund an award named after it, the Great Man-Made River International Water Prize, the purpose of which is to “reward remarkable scientific research work on water usage in arid areas”. http://bit.ly/rnxiCf  Gaddafi was often ridiculed in the West for persevering with such an ambitious project. Pejorative terms such “pipedream”,“pet project” and “mad dog” appeared in UK and US media. Despite a certain amount of awe for the enormity of the construction, the Great Man-made River was often dismissed as a “vanity project” and then rarely mentioned in western media. But truth is, it’s a world class water delivery system, and often visited by overseas engineers and planners wanting to learn from Libyan expertise in water transfer hydro-engineering.

Source: www.scoop.co.nz

New crop varieties can cut poverty, study finds!!!

The thorny question of whether improved crop varieties do, in fact, lift peasant farmers out of poverty has been answered positively in a study of groundnut varieties, according to researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), in Kenya.


Evidence that new technologies improve small farmers' wellbeing is scarce because the impact of adopting technologies depends on many factors such as the existence of infrastructure, policies and institutions that are often not fully functional in developing countries. For example, technology that increases productivity may not reduce poverty if the farmers do not have access to markets to sell their extra crop.

In addition, some studies have claimed that building capacity is more important than technology for improving livelihoods.

Researchers from CIMMYT selected more than 900 households at random from seven major groundnut growing districts in Uganda and, in 2006, surveyed socioeconomic data and information related to the adoption of improved groundnut varieties. Groundnut is an important crop in Uganda.

Farmers who adopted any of four improved varieties resistant to major pests and diseases — developed by national and international organisations, and released in Uganda between 1999 and 2002 — were compared with non-adopters. The results of the study were published in the October 2011 issue of World Development.

"We found that the adoption of [improved] groundnut varieties significantly increased the net value of income by US$130–254 per hectare," said Menale Kassie, one of the authors of the study. "Adoption of groundnut varieties also significantly reduced poverty as measured by headcount index [the proportion of people below the poverty line] by 7–9 per cent."

In a related study, which has been submitted for publication, Kassie and colleagues found that adopting improved maize varieties also significantly improves rural households' food security and decreases the extent of poverty.

Richard Edema, a plant pathologist and senior lecturer in the school of agricultural sciences at Makerere University, Uganda, said: "Studies [such as this one] can serve as feedback for agricultural scientists to assess whether new [crop] varieties are making real impacts on farmers' lives".

Okello David Kalule, head of the Uganda National Groundnut Improvement Programme, said that, although the new groundnut varieties produce superior yields, some farmers are still growing low-yielding varieties. The reasons for this, he said, include poor agricultural extension services and a lack of access to information about the new varieties.

"Local institutions should be strengthened to collectively improve access to seeds, credit, and information to increase both the spread and intensity of adoption," he said.

Source: www.scidev.net

The Cost of Climate Change Is Jobs

The weather in South Africa is beautiful -- warm during the day, cool and breezy at night. This is a unique and fitting place to stage the United Nations Climate Change Conference, as South Africa prepares for the impacts of climate change.


The costs of adapting to climate change are not limited to South Africa or other countries that the UNFCCC framework considers "developing." The cost is something that we in the United States deal with on a daily basis, even if there are still powerful "climate deniers" in Congress who aren't willing to admit it. From the costs of increasingly severe weather events to the rising cost of food from climate-related droughts, Americans pay for global warming every day.

But the biggest cost that we pay is in lost opportunity. As it stands, the U.S. is failing to take advantage of the opportunities to create good jobs by addressing climate change. This makes less and less sense as our economy struggles to regain its footing, and as millions of Americans continue to search for work.

The BlueGreen Alliance is in Durban this week advocating for a framework to address climate change that spurs economic growth and job creation in the United States. The 15 partners of the BlueGreen Alliance -- 11 of America's largest labor unions and four of its most influential environmental organizations -- released a statement this week, "Fighting Climate Change, Creating Jobs," which advocates international climate action grounded in science-based greenhouse gas reduction targets, urging the U.S. to pursue emissions reductions as aggressively as possible by taking all feasible steps to meet current near term targets. This can be achieved through investments and policies that will build a strong clean energy economy, create new jobs for American workers and improve U.S. competitiveness in the global economy.

We can accomplish these goals through smart policies and strategic investments in building a truly 21st century American economy. Growing the production of clean energy in the United States while making our transportation systems, industries, building stock, transmission and communications systems more efficient will both create jobs and ensure that America is competitive in an increasingly efficient global economy.

On Friday, the Labor Department announced that the American economy had gained about 120,000 jobs in November. A positive number is a good number. But we have to face facts: we aren't going to put eight million people back to work with a piecemeal approach to our economy. It's no longer acceptable to sit on the sidelines and hope that jobs will be created and that our economy will recover by returning to an unsustainable pre-2008 economic model. It's no longer an option to deny the impact of climate change on our economy. We need action to build the industries that will drive our future economy in the United States, and we need it now.

In Durban this week, thousands of people from around the world are gathering to advocate for an agreement that will avert the worst impacts of climate change and help impacted nations adapt. Whether in South Africa or in the United States, the cost of climate change is deep and far reaching. It's costing us money. It's costing us economic growth. And it's costing us jobs.

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Deforestation and forest degradation down in the Brazilian Amazon since August

Not all is bad, deforestation and forest degradation are down moderately from August through October 2011 relative to the same period a year ago, reports a satellite-based assessment released today by Imazon, a Brazilian group. Imazon's near-real time system, which tracks change in forest plots 25 hectares (62 acres) or larger, found that 512 square kilometers of rainforest were cleared between August 2011 and October 2011, the first three months of the deforestation calendar year, which runs from August 1 through July 31 to coincide with the dry season when it is easiest to measure forest cover. The figure represents a 4 percent decline from the 533 square kilometers cleared in 2010.


Imazon's system also tracks forest degradation — including logging and fire damage — that often precedes outright deforestation. It recorded a 52 percent decline in degradation from 2,599 sq km to 1,246 sq km.

Overall Imazon estimated that deforestation and degradation in the Brazilian Amazon during the period committed 32 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

Source: www.enn.com

Coffee and Prostate Cancer

Coffee is a brewed drink prepared from roasted seeds, called coffee beans, of the coffee plant. Coffee beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees in over 70 countries, cultivated primarily in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Findings have historically been contradictory as to whether coffee has any specific health benefits, and results are similarly conflicting regarding the potentially harmful effects of coffee consumption. Men who regularly drink coffee appear to have a lower risk of developing a lethal form of prostate cancer, according to a new study led by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers.  The lower risk was evident among men who drank regular or decafffeinated coffe.

Coffee contains several compounds which are known to affect human body chemistry. The coffee bean itself contains chemicals which are mild psychotropics for humans. These chemicals are toxic in large doses, or even in their normal amount when consumed by many creatures which may otherwise have threatened the beans in the wild. Coffee contains caffeine, which acts as a stimulant.


Several benefits have been proposed or identified such as:

-Reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease and Dementia

-Reduced risk of gallstone disease

-Reduced risk of Parkinson disease

-Improved short term recall

-Analgesic (Painkiller)enhancement

-Liver protection

-Reduced cancer risk

-Moderate reduction of the incidence of dying from cardiovascular disease

-Antioxidant; Coffee contains the anticancer compound methylpyridinium. This compound is not present in significant amounts in other food materials.

However, there are some potential risks.

Over 1,000 chemicals have been reported in roasted coffee, and 19 are known rodent carcinogens; however, most substances cited as rodent carcinogens occur naturally and should not be assumed to be carcinogenic in humans at exposure levels typically experienced in day-to-day life.

Coffee can damage the lining of the gastrointestinal organs, causing gastritis and ulcers. The consumption of coffee is therefore not recommended for people with gastritis, colitis, and ulcers.

Many coffee drinkers are familiar with "coffee jitters", a nervous condition that occurs when one has had too much caffeine. It can also cause anxiety and irritability, in some with excessive coffee consumption, and some as a withdrawal symptom. Coffee can also cause insomnia in some.

A Harvard study conducted over the course of 20 years of 128,000 people published in 2006 concluded that there was no evidence to support the claim that coffee consumption itself increases the risk of coronary heart disease. The study did, however, show a correlation between heavy consumption of coffee and higher degrees of exposure to other coronary heart disease risk factors such as smoking, greater alcohol consumption, and lack of physical exercise.

The prostate cancer study was published May 17 in an online edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

"Few studies have specifically studied the association of coffee intake and the risk of lethal prostate cancer, the form of the disease that is the most critical to prevent. Our study is the largest to date to examine whether coffee could lower the risk of lethal prostate cancer," said senior author Lorelei Mucci, associate professor of epidemiology at HSPH.

Lethal prostate cancer is cancer that causes death or spreads to the bones. Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed form of cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death among U.S. men, affecting one in six men during their lifetime. More than 2 million men in the United States and 16 million men worldwide are prostate cancer survivors.

"At present we lack an understanding of risk factors that can be changed or controlled to lower the risk of lethal prostate cancer. If our findings are validated, coffee could represent one modifiable factor that may lower the risk of developing the most harmful form of prostate cancer," said lead author Kathryn Wilson, a research fellow in epidemiology at HSPH.

The study examined the association between coffee consumption and the risk of prostate cancer, particularly the risk for aggressive prostate cancer, among 47,911 U.S. men in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study who reported their coffee consumption every four years from 1986 to 2008. During the study period, 5,035 cases of prostate cancer were reported, including 642 fatal or metastatic cases.

Among the findings:

- Men who consumed the most coffee (six or more cups daily) had nearly a 20 percent lower risk of developing any form of prostate cancer.

- The inverse association with coffee was even stronger for aggressive prostate cancer. Men who drank the most coffee had a 60 percent lower risk of developing lethal prostate cancer.

- The reduction in risk was seen whether the men drank decaffeinated or regular coffee, and does not appear to be due to caffeine.

- Drinking one to three cups of coffee per day was associated with a 30 percent lower risk of lethal prostate cancer.

The results need to be validated in additional populations that have a range of coffee exposure and a large number of lethal prostate cancer cases. If confirmed, the data would add to the list of other potential health benefits of coffee. The authors are planning additional studies to understand specific mechanisms by which coffee may lower the risk of lethal prostate cancer.

Source: http://www.enn.com/

The Earth's 6th Great Mass Extinction is Occurring as You Read This -A Galaxy Classic

"In one sense we know much less about Earth than we do about Mars. The vast majority of life forms on our planet are still undiscovered, and their significance for our own species remains unknown. This gap in our knowledge is a serious matter: we will never completely understand and preserve the living world around us at our present level of ignorance.


"If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos."

Edward O. Wilson, The world's leading authority on Biodiversity, Emeritus Professor of Biology at Harvard and author of "The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth."

There is little doubt left in the minds of professional biologists that Earth is currently faced with a mounting loss of species that threatens to rival the five great mass extinctions of the geological past, the most devasting being the Third major Extinction (c. 245 mya), the Permian, where 54% of the planet's species families lost. As long ago as 1993, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson estimated that Earth is currently losing something on the order of 30,000 species per year -- which breaks down to the even more daunting statistic of some three species per hour. Some biologists have begun to feel that this biodiversity crisis -- this "Sixth Extinction" -- is even more severe, and more imminent, than Wilson had supposed.

.../...

It is a radical vision to many people, and the Wildlands Project expects that it will take at least 100 years to complete. Even so, projects like this, on a worldwide basis, may be humanity’s best chance of saving what’s left of the planets eco-system, and the human race along with it.

Please read the full arcticle at : The Earth's 6th Great Mass Extinction

Mass Extinction Threat: Earth on Verge of Huge Reset Button?

Article by: Jeremy Hsu

LiveScience Senior Writer

Mass extinctions have served as huge reset buttons that dramatically changed the diversity of species found in oceans all over the world, according to a comprehensive study of fossil records. The findings suggest humans will live in a very different future if they drive animals to extinction, because the loss of each species can alter entire ecosystems.

Some scientists have speculated that effects of humans - from hunting to climate change - are fueling another great mass extinction. A few go so far as to say we are entering a new geologic epoch, leaving the 10,000-year-old Holocene Epoch behind and entering the Anthropocene Epoch , marked by major changes to global temperatures and ocean chemistry, increased sediment erosion, and changes in biology that range from altered flowering times to shifts in migration patterns of birds and mammals and potential die-offs of tiny organisms that support the entire marine food chain.

Scientists had once thought species diversity could help buffer a group of animals from such die-offs, either keeping them from heading toward extinction or helping them to bounce back. But having many diverse species also proved no guarantee of future success for any one group of animals, given that mass extinctions more or less wiped the slate clean, according to studies such as the latest one.

Then and now

Looking back in time, the diversity of large taxonomic groups (which include lots of species), such as snails or corals, mostly hovered around a certain equilibrium point that represented a diversity limit of species' numbers. But that diversity limit also appears to have changed spontaneously throughout Earth's history about every 200 million years.

How today's extinction crisis - species today go extinct at a rate that may range from 10 to 100 times the so-called background extinction rate - may change the face of the planet and its species goes beyond what humans can predict, the researchers say.

"The main implication is that we're really rolling the dice," said John Alroy, a paleobiologist at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. "We don't know which groups will suffer the most, which groups will rebound the most quickly, or which ones will end up with higher or lower long-term equilibrium diversity levels."

What seems certain is that the fate of each animal group will differ greatly, Alroy said.

His analysis, detailed in the Sept. 3 issue of the journal Science, is based on almost 100,000 fossil collections in the Paleobiology Database (PaleoDB).

The findings revealed various examples of diversity shifts, including one that took place in a group of ocean bottom-dwelling bivalves called brachiopods, which are similar to clams and oysters. They dominated the Paleozoic era from 540 million to 250 million years ago, and branched out into new species during two huge adaptive spurts of growth in diversity - each time followed by a big crash.

The brachiopods then reached a low, but steady, equilibrium over the past 250 million years in which there wasn't a surge or a crash in species' numbers, and still live on today as a rare group of marine animals.

Counting creatures better

In the past, researchers have typically counted species in the fossil record by randomly drawing a set number of samples from each time period - a method that can leave out less common species. In fact two studies using the PaleoDB used this approach.

Instead, Alroy used a new approach called shareholder sampling, in which he tracked how frequently certain groups appeared in the fossil record, and then counted enough samples until he hit a target number representative of the proportion for each group.

"In some sense the older methods are a little like the American voting system - the first-past-the-post-winner method basically makes minority views invisible," said Charles Marshall, a paleontologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who did not take part in the study. "However, with proportional systems, minority views still get seats in parliament."

Marshall added that the study was the "most thorough quantitative analysis to date using global marine data ." But he added that researchers will probably debate whether the PaleoDB data represents a complete-enough picture of the fossil record.

Nothing lasts forever

The idea that rules of diversity change should not come as a surprise for most researchers, according to Marshall.

"To me, the really interesting possibility is that some groups might not yet be close enough to their caps to have those caps be manifest yet," Marshall told LiveScience. Or "evolutionary innovation" might happen so quickly that new groups emerged to increase overall diversity, even if each sub-group reached a cap on diversity.

If anything, the record of past extinctions has shown the difficulty of predicting which groups win out in the long run. "Surviving is one thing and recovering is another," said Marshall, who wrote a Perspectives piece about the study in the same issue of Science.

One of the few consistent patterns is that growth spurts in diversity can apparently happen at any time, according to Alroy. He added that the background extinction of individual species has also remained consistent - the average species lasts just a few million years.

Of course, the ongoing extinction crisis of modern times goes far beyond the background extinction rate. Alroy noted that it could not only wipe out entire branches of evolutionary history, but may also change the ecosystems shaped by each species.

That means today's species matter for environments around the world, and so humans can't simply expect replacements from the diverse species of the future.

"If we lose all the reef builders, we may not get back the physical reefs for millions of years no matter how fast we get back all the species diversity in a simple sense," Alroy said.

August 21 is (was) Earth Overshoot Day

Exactly what does this mean and how bad is it?

August 21st marks an unfortunate milestone: the day in which we exhaust our ecological budget for the year. Once we pass this day, humanity will have demanded all the ecological services – from filtering CO2 to producing the raw materials for food – that nature can provide this year. From that point until the end of the year, we meet our ecological demand by liquidating resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.


What is Earth Overshoot Day?

Every year, Global Footprint Network calculates nature's supply in the form of biocapacity, the amount of resources the planet generates, and compares that to human demand: the amount it takes to produce all the living resources we consume and absorb our carbon dioxide emissions. Earth Overshoot Day, a concept devised by U.K.-based new economics foundation, marks the day when demand on ecological services begins to exceed the renewable supply.

What is Overshoot?

For most of human history, humanity has been able to live off of nature's interest -- consuming resources and producing carbon dioxide at a rate lower than what the planet was able to regenerate and reabsorb each year.

But approximately three decades ago, we crossed a critical threshold, and the rate of human demand for ecological services began to outpace the rate at which nature could provide them. This gap between demand and supply -- known as ecological overshoot -- has grown steadily each year. Global Footprint Network's most recent data show that it takes one year and five months to generate the ecological services (production of resources and absorption of CO2) that humanity requires in one year.

The Cost of Ecological Overspending

Of course, we only have one Earth. The fact that we are using (or “spending” natural capital) faster than it can replenish is similar to having expenditures that continually exceed income. In planetary terms, the results of our ecological overspending are becoming more clear by the day. Climate change – a result of carbon being emitted faster than it can be reabsorbed by the forests and seas – is the most obvious and arguably pressing result. But there are others as well: shrinking forests, species loss, fisheries collapse and freshwater stress to name a few.

How is Earth Overshoot Day Calculated?

Put simply, Earth Overshoot Day shows the day on which our total Ecological Footprint (measured in global hectares) is equal to the biocapacity (also measured in global hectares) that nature can regenerate in that year. For the rest of the year, we are accumulating debt by depleting our natural capital and letting waste accumulate.

The day of the year on which humanity enters into overshoot and begins adding to our ecological debt is calculated by calculating the ratio of global available biocapacity to global Ecological Footprint and multiplying by 365. From this, we find the number of days of demand that the biosphere could supply, and the number of days we operate in overshoot.

f you have further inquiries about Earth Overshoot Day, please contact http://www.footprintnetwork.org/