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The Bloomberg administration has set a goal of doubling the amount of garbage it diverts from landfills over the next five years.

"If we're going to be the most innovative city in the world, we also have to be the greenest – because that's how you attract the most talented individuals and most forward-looking companies," Mayor Bloomberg is expected to say in his prepared remarks.

Well...duh!

The efforts still fall far short of what many other American cities are doing, but environmentalists who have followed the New York's waste management over the years said they were cautiously optimistic.

"It's encouraging to hear the mayor's personal commitment to issues that have not received the attention that they've deserved," said Eric A. Goldstein, a senior lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "As always, it's the details of the plan and the ability to implement them that's the challenge."

The fact that you can't recycle #5 plastics (like yogurt cups) in New York City is just ridiculous, of course. C'mon, Bloomie...speed it up!

Here's a sampling:

6) Fishing line: Mail to Berkley Recycling, which turns it into fish habitat structures: 1900 18th Street; Spirit Lake, IA 51360.

10) Plastic packaging: Many pack-and-ship stores will take packing peanuts and bubble wrap. For drop-off locations for foam blocks, contact the Alliance of Foam Packaging Recyclers.

12) "Technotrash": Organizations and schools can earn money for recycling ink cartridges and small electronics like cell phones and iPods through ProjectKOPEG.com. Recycle a large box of CDs, DVDs, jewel cases, audio and video tapes, small electronics, and ink cartridges for $30 (includes postage) through Green Disk, 800/305-GREENDISK, GreenDisk.com.

Now stop dumpin' and get recyclin'!

By 2100, global climate change will modify plant communities covering almost half of Earth's land surface and will drive the conversion of nearly 40 percent of land-based ecosystems from one major ecological community type - such as forest, grassland or tundra - toward another, according to a new NASA and university computer modeling study.

This section of the report was particularly troubling:

To study the sensitivity of Earth's ecological systems to climate change, the scientists used a computer model that predicts the type of plant community that is uniquely adapted to any climate on Earth. This model was used to simulate the future state of Earth's natural vegetation in harmony with climate projections from 10 different global climate simulations. These simulations are based on the intermediate greenhouse gas scenario in the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report. That scenario assumes greenhouse gas levels will double by 2100 and then level off. The U.N. report's climate simulations predict a warmer and wetter Earth, with global temperature increases of 3.6 to 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (2 to 4 degrees Celsius) by 2100, about the same warming that occurred following the Last Glacial Maximum almost 20,000 years ago, except about 100 times faster. Under the scenario, some regions become wetter because of enhanced evaporation, while others become drier due to changes in atmospheric circulation.

Yes, the earth has warmed up before naturally, but never at the pace that's happening now. And this is what human-induced Climate Change deniers don't get: we're warming up the planet 100 times faster than has ever occurred before!

Let's hope we can wake up before it's too late...

The so-called Durban platform is a promise to negotiate a new climate deal by 2015 to replace the Kyoto protocol and take effect in 2020. It's a commitment to "a process to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties." (If this doesn't strike you as faintly ridiculous, you've been spending too much time at the UN.)

In essence, all the parties agreed to sit down during the next session and actually hammer out a legally-binding document that all polluters would be beholden to. But is that going to happen, and should they just be focused on reducing emissions --- or setting new policies?

Negotiations that focus on setting targets for emissions are unlikely to succeed, if only because the levels of emissions reflect forces -- economic growth, fuel costs, technology breakthroughs (or their absence) -- over which governments have limited control.

Instead of agreeing to numerical emissions targets, governments could pledge to adopt "greener" policies. They could, for example, set efficiency standards for buildings or cars, or impose a carbon tax."Especially when it comes to countries that are growing rapidly, it's much easier for them to make promises about policies and measures than about emissions outputs," says David Victor, director of UCSD's Laboratory on International Law & Regulation.

Well, there are some optimists:

To be sure, as the optimists argue, this is the first time that the governments of countries that are the biggest carbon emitters -- China, the United States, the EU and India -- have agreed to negotiate legally binding restrictions. That's a big change from the terms of the Kyoto protocol, which essentially excluded developing countries, among them China, the world's biggest carbon emitter.

Fingers are crossed but breath is not held. There is a long way to go on this thing, that's for sure.

The anonymous hacker who shook the world of climate science two years ago by posting a trove of stolen e-mails delivered a new batch on Tuesday, stirring up climate-change contrarians a little more than a week before global negotiations on greenhouse gases are to begin in Durban, South Africa.

But from the source (University of East Anglia), we have this:

If genuine, (the sheer volume of material makes it impossible to confirm at present that they are all genuine) these emails have the appearance of having been held back after the theft of data and emails in 2009 to be released at a time designed to cause maximum disruption to the imminent international climate talks.

This appears to be a carefully-timed attempt to reignite controversy over the science behind climate change when that science has been vindicated by three separate independent inquiries and number of studies -- including, most recently, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature group.

As in 2009, extracts from emails have been taken completely out of context. Following the previous release of emails scientists highlighted by the controversy have been vindicated by independent review, and claims that their science cannot or should not be trusted are entirely unsupported. They, the University and the wider research community have stood by the science throughout, and continue to do so.

And from RealClimate:

The blogosphere is abuzz with the appearance of a second tranche of the emails stolen from CRU just before thanksgiving in 2009. Our original commentary is still available of course (CRU Hack, CRU Hack: Context, etc.), and very little appears to be new in this batch. Indeed, even the out-of-context quotes aren't that exciting, and are even less so in-context.

A couple of differences in this go around are worth noting: the hacker was much more careful to cover their tracks in the zip file they produced -- all the file dates are artificially set to Jan 1 2011 for instance, and they didn't bother to hack into the RealClimate server this time either. Hopefully they have left some trails that the police can trace a little more successfully than they've been able to thus far from the previous release.

More of Much Ado About Nothing...again.

At least some of the weather extremes being seen around the world are consequences of human-induced climate change and can be expected to worsen in coming decades, a United Nations panel reported on Friday.

It is particularly likely that greenhouse gas emissions related to human activity have already led to more record-high temperatures and fewer record lows, as well as to more extremes of precipitation and to greater coastal flooding, the report said.

Whether inland flooding is getting worse because of human influence is murkier, the report said. Nor can any firm conclusion be drawn at this point about the human influence on hurricanes, typhoons, hail storms or tornadoes.

And where's the largest economy (U.S.) in the world (more than twice as large as the next economy - China) stand on this issue? It's nowhere to be found:

In 2008, both the Democratic and Republican candidates for president, Barack Obama and John McCain, warned about man-made global warming and supported legislation to curb emissions. After he was elected, President Obama promised "a new chapter in America's leadership on climate change," and arrived cavalry-like at the 2009 United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen to broker a global pact.

But two years later, now that nearly every other nation accepts climate change as a pressing problem, America has turned agnostic on the issue.

Though the evidence of climate change has, if anything, solidified, President Obama now talks about "green jobs" mostly as a strategy for improving the economy, not the planet. He did not mention climate in his last State of the Union address. Meanwhile, the administration is fighting to exempt United States airlines from Europe's new plan to charge them for CO2 emissions when they land on the continent. It also seems poised to eventually approve a nearly 2,000-mile-long pipeline, from Canada down through the United States, that will carry a kind of oil. Extracting it will put relatively high levels of emissions into the atmosphere.

"In Washington, 'climate change' has become a lightning rod, it's a four-letter word," said Andrew J. Hoffman, director of the University of Michigan's Erb Institute for Sustainable Development.

Yup. Completely absent in the global dialogue on global Climate Change is the U.S. All while the planet cooks.

Imagine a renewable energy resource capable of producing more than 10 times the energy of the installed capacity of coal in the US. That’s the potential for Geothermal Energy in the United States, according to a recently completed 3-year project supported by Google.org to update the Geothermal Map of North America from 2004.

TalkingPointsMemo has more, too:

As part of that effort, the Mountain View, California-based company's philanthropic arm, "Google.org," on Tuesday published a new Google Earth map of the geothermal resources in the continental United States, created from data collected by the Geothermal Laboratory at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas, which received a $489,521 grant from Google for the project.

The new map, an update of a running one that SMU scientists prepared in 2004 and 1992, estimates that the technical potential of geothermal in the U.S. is nearly 3 million megawatts (2,980,295), or 10 times the capacity of all the installed coal power plants in the country today.

SMU's sampled data from 35,000 oil, gas and water well sites across the country for the study, twice as many sites as their last study, used to create the 2004 map. Many of the new data points were located in the eastern portion of the United States, where geothermal resources were thought to be far less viable than the new study has found. The most obvious geothermal resources, hot springs in the Yellowstone area, have been exploited as baths and for hot water heating systems since the first settlers moved West in the 1800's.

Read up on the history of geothermal energy in the U.S., then start talking about this massive energy source literally located right under our feet!

Electric Vehicle (EV) charging stations are beginning to sprout up in the United States as the push for electric cars accelerates. With that effort, however, comes a growing concern that a surge in EV adoption will overload the existing power grid unless something is done to manage when charging occurs -- or to offset or entirely avoid such a drain.

By integrating EVs into home energy systems, an electric car could serve as potential power source to "give back" to the grid when necessary. With solar power also in a home, the energy system could supplement the grid rather than draw from it. A solar-powered carport charging system could do the same.

It looks like General Electric is leading the charge in this area:

General Electric and Inovateus Solar are working together to offer solar-powered carports equipped with charging stations for electric cars -- a concept that enables large-scale EV charging in commercial and corporate parking lots without a huge draw on the grid.

GE's partnerships enable the company to plant two more stakes -- one for commercial applications and one for residential -- into the market for electric car support systems and networks.

"I think we have a unique offering here," said Chris Bowler, marketing leader for GE Energy Industrial Solutions. "It provides a solution as a system. That's the thing that's important -- a solution that's also a system."

Other companies are jumping on the electron band wagon, too!

Charging stations for electric vehicles are expected to sprout up at 800 Walgreens stores by the end year -- the most EV stations hosted by any retailer. EV drivers who want to recharge their cars at a Walgreens will find one of two types of devices: a high-speed direct current charger, which can add 30 miles of range in roughly 10 minutes, or a Level 2 device that adds as much as 25 miles of range per hour of charge.

Imagine a world where you drive up to your EV station and fill up on electrons. Won't that be fun?

The chart is from the National Ice & Snow Data Center, which also had this to say:

Arctic sea ice extent averaged for August 2011 reached the second lowest level for the month in the 1979 to 2011 satellite record. Both the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea route appear to be open. Throughout August, sea ice extent tracked near the record lows of 2007, underscoring the continued decline in Arctic ice cover. Including 2011 the linear trend for August now stands at -9.3% per decade.

Sea ice is now almost completely gone from the channels of the Northwest Passage, with the exception of a small strip of ice across a stretch of the Parry Channel. The southern route (Amunden's Route) is ice free. According to the Canadian Ice Service, sea ice extent in the western Parry Channel is now the lowest at this time of year since record keeping began in 1966 and very little multi-year ice remains. According to Multisensor Analyzed Sea Ice Extent (MASIE) data, ice cover across the Canadian Archipelago is at record low levels.

The Northern Sea Route along Siberia remains ice-free, with a number of cargo ships passing through in recent weeks.

And here's the chart that shows how far from the median this year's ice melt has shrunk:

We are doomed.

HR 2599 is the PACE Assessment Protection Act of 2011, a House bill co-sponsored by 14 Republicans and 11 Democrats that would restore Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) funding programs, which were kiboshed last year by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Still not clear? Okay. So PACE was a brilliant bit of funding wizardry pioneered out in sunny California. The ever-informative Todd Woody of Forbes has a tidy little summary for you:

The program, pioneered by the city of Berkeley, Calif., allows municipalities to float bonds to finance the installation of home solar arrays and other energy efficiency projects. Homeowners avoid the five-figure upfront cost of going solar and pay back the money through an annual surcharge on their property tax bill, typically over 20 years. If an owner sells the home, the surcharge rolls over to the buyer.

The initial reaction?

Folks were wild about PACE, and no wonder. If I'm Joe or Jane Homeowner, here's my value proposition: I get solar panels, maybe a solar hot water heater or heat exchanger or high-efficiency furnace or, why not, maybe even a geothermal heat pump -- there are limitless possibilities -- and instead of having to take out a bank loan or second mortgage or come up with twenty grand in capital in the worst economy since the Dust Bowl, I simply pay a bit extra on my property bill. It's like rent-to-own without the usury. Simple. Effective. Sign me up, right?

It all started in Berkeley, California, and spread to 24 other states within months. There was one problem, though:

A PACE bond was a sort of lein against the house, and Freddie and Fannie had become pathologically terrified of leins, even ones backed by other arms of various governments. They said nay, California's PACE program and all the rest withered on the vine, and the whole new-economy notion vanished into the churn of recrimination and half-truth about whose fault it was that the old economy was flatlining.

The economics are undeniable:

If 1% of U.S. homeowners participated in the program and each installed a $20,000 project, more than 226,000 jobs would be created along with more than $40 billion in economic activity and more than $4 billion in tax revenue.

The remarkable thing is that this is a Republican-led effort! Hooray! Says very conservative Representative from California, Dan Lundgren:

"If you're looking for a bipartisan, bicoastal, transcontinental effort to deal with the challenges of energy, the challenges of the economy and the need to create jobs, this is a win-win-win," said Lungren, a conservative Republican. "Frankly it's hard to figure out why someone would be opposed to this."

Indeed...why would anyone be opposed?

You can help nudge this bill to fruition by tracking its developments here, at OpenCongress.org, where you can send a letter to your representative asking him or her to co-sign this piece of legislation.

You can also follow PACE as it progresses through Congress by checking out this widget!

Other resources are the Run on Sun blog, which lists all the co-sponsors so far.

Space shuttle Atlantis touched down on the Shuttle Landing Facility's Runway 15 at 5:57 a.m. EDT on July 21. After 200 orbits around Earth and a journey of 5,284,862 miles, the landing at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida brought to a close 30 years of space shuttle flights.

"Although we got to take the ride," said Commander Chris Ferguson on behalf of his crew," we sure hope that everybody who has ever worked on, or touched, or looked at, or envied or admired a space shuttle was able to take just a little part of the journey with us."

Indeed, we have!

Read more from the NY Times.

Read what's next on the multi-decade agenda for NASA.

And support our fantastic space program and our hero astronauts!!

"We recommend that people eat healthy by eating more fruits and vegetables, whether conventional or organic," says Ken Cook, president and founder of Environmental Working Group. "But people don't want to eat pesticides with their produce if they don't have to. And with EWG's guide, they don't."

EMagazine.com has more:

To ensure their data accurately embodied a typical consumer's pesticide intake, the USDA and FDA thoroughly washed and peeled fruit and vegetable samples before they were tested, much like one would at their own home. They then calculated the percent of samples that had detectable pesticides, the percent of samples with two or more pesticides, the average number and amount (in parts per million) of all pesticides found on a sample, the maximum number of pesticides found on a single sample and the number of pesticides found on the fruit or vegetable in total.

The Shopper's Guide lists fruits and vegetables in order of these percentages, and the twelve with the highest pesticide contamination make up their "Dirty Dozen" list. Apples, America's most popular fruit after bananas, topped the "Dirty Dozen" list this year- pesticide residues were present on 98% of the over 700 samples tested. Second to apples was celery, followed by strawberries, peaches, spinach, nectarines (imported), grapes (imported), bell peppers, potatoes, blueberries (domestic), lettuce and kale/collard greens.

Yes, an "apple a day keeps the doctor away" still applies...but only if you wash it properly before consuming it!