The USDA is considering some interesting changes to what exactly constitutes organic. They’re talking about allowing non-organic versions of intestines for sausage casings, hops for beer, fish oil, gelatin, coloring agents, and produce coating agents. The reason for this change is that there are not organic versions of these substances available.

The changes would also allow conventionally grown hops to be used in beers labeled “USDA Organic”.

Seems to me that they are completely missing the point of labeling something organic.

Organic is more than just a marketing tool. Allowing this to go through would dilute the legal meaning of organic, just to suit some corporate interests.

There’s not much time left for commenting. This is to be decided May 22, 2007. If you care about it, add your name to the petition. They only gave a minimal, 7 day commenting period, which will be over all too soon.

Technorati Tags: organic, usda organic

We might just be finding that one out, as Antartica’s Southern Ocean, which takes up about 15% of the world’s excess carbon dioxide, appears to be nearly saturated.

What this means, of course, is that it cannot absorb more carbon dioxide, and so more will stay in the air. Anyone care to consider what exactly that means? How about approximately?

Technorati Tags: carbon sink, antartica southern ocean

Pretty interesting watching the interest in the environment continue to develop. Now Microsoft and the William J. Clinton Foundation have partnered to create a software to track carbon emissions. The idea is to create a standardized way to track carbon emissions so that cities can figure out more accurately if they are reducing emissions.

The plan is for Microsoft to provide the software for free. It may be available by the end of 2007. It would have many web-based tools and allow cities to share data.

Of course, free software really only means so much and people can be quite skeptical about the true motivations behind this kind of thing. Businesses don’t do these things just to be kind, after all. It’s good for the image at the very least. The real question will be how effective is the software.

Technorati Tags: microsoft, William J. Clinton Foundation, software, environment, carbon emissions

Over on NASA’s Earth Observatory News site there’s an article about how much warmer summers could get. They’re talking about an increase in average summertime temperatures in the Eastern United States of 10 degrees Fahrenheit by 2080.

That’s pretty miserable, especially if humidity stays about the same, which they didn’t specify.

I live on the West Coast, and they didn’t talk about what summers would be like here. Where I live it is not uncommon to have days over 100 degrees, and that’s pretty miserable. They’re talking about Chicago, Washington and Atlanta averaging between 100 and 110 degrees during July and August by 2080.
The article goes on about the prediction model they used and how it is improved over previously used models. I won’t get into that here – read it if that interests you.

Obviously, it’s just a prediction based on a model, and who knows if it will come true. Who knows if anything can be done about it. But this is the kind of thing we need to be preparing for. This model was based on the “business as usual” scenario of carbon dioxide production.

Technorati Tags: global warming, weather, hot summers, extreme summer temperatures, environment, nasa, greenhouse gases