Just saw this one on my local news and had to look it up.
A new theory on colony collapse disorder blames cell phones. It’s a fascinating idea, but one I really hope isn’t true. Just imagine how difficult it would be to fix this problem!
This is one hypothesis that hasn’t been proven yet, but the idea has possibilities. Apparently bees get lost when exposed to signals from cell phones.
Technorati Tags: bees, colony collapse disorder, cell phones
I just read over on Tree Hugger that colony collapse disorder, which I posted about the other day, is also being seen in the UK. You just can’t help but think of the terrible potential impact due to this. Much as you don’t generally want too close an encouter with a bee, especially if you’re allergic to their stings, they’re vital to our farmers and therefore to the rest of us.
Unfortunately, this is something that no one has figured out the cause to yet, and without that it will be hard to come up with a solution.
Technorati Tags: colony collapse disorder, bees, bee trouble
The potential impacts of global warming are becoming more apparent all the time. Obviously, we can hope that the worst won’t come to pass, but it is still a good idea to prepare for them as best we can. These problems will be much harder to cope with when they actually happen if we haven’t given any thought to them in advance.
For example, it appears that Texas and much of the Southwest will face perpetual drought by 2021. That has to be scary for those living in potentially impacted areas.
Of course, these are projections rather than predictions. The thing to think about is that many models have predicted more drought in that area.
Also, drought in that area is a common enough problem that having a plan in place for a serious drought is a good idea. Harder yet to plan for a perpetual drought, but big droughts and little are best planned for. Continue reading →
This story caught my attention in part because of my son. He’s a very quiet two year old, and we nicknamed him “Dr. Doolittle” because he loves all animals so much and always talks to them.
But the other day he shocked my by coming in from the back yard, just babbling happily away. He had one finger extended to show me what he’d found.
A live bee was sitting quite contentedly on his finger.
As you can imagine, I got rid of the bee quite quickly. He didn’t get stung and I didn’t want to risk him trying to pet the bee or something. You just never know with two year olds.
This just happened a couple weeks ago, and of course came to mind when I read this story on Yahoo News about how bees in the US are disappearing, and no one quite knows why.
It’s being called Colony Collapse Disorder, and research is being done to figure out the cause – pathogen or toxin. Whatever the cause, the potential impact is huge. Just think about it. Continue reading →
Right now ethanol is generally made from corn. It’s an option for biofuel, but has a negative impact on the availability of corn for consumption, making the price generally higher. It’s not the best choice, really.
So I am quite glad to hear that technology is finding ways to make ethanol from grasses and trees. That’s a much more sensible source, I suspect. May depend on exactly how these things are grown, but it makes more sense to me than using a food crop for fuel production.
I found this in particular interesting:
Sell said the future of biofuels is cellulosic ethanol, made from microbes that break down woody bits of non-food crops into sugars that can be fermented into fuel.
Cellulosic, and other new biofuels such as biobutanol, which can be made from petroleum as well as biomass, could begin to feed the commercial fuel market within six to 10 years