Perhaps the plight of these sea turtles is what is causing these other little fellows to be confused about their lot in life. Some 60 newly hatched sea turtles seemed to have gotten lost during their rite of passage … their initial march to the sea. Instead of finding the big wet, they marched into an Italian restaurant … ordered Pizza, alfredo fettucini instead?

It’s not funny. The baby sea turtles ended up under the tables of diners at the beachside restaurant. Conservationists couldn’t figure out what went wrong and the little critters did not respond to direct questions, like “Where you guys think you’re going?”

One conservation thinks “They saw the artificial lights and took the wrong route.” What? No mapquest for turtles? After curious restaurant goers and tourists with cameras got their kicks, the turtles were released into the sea.

And, do we really wonder why the Sea Turtle is endangered now?

Can you imagine a fight between a dog and a lion? It’s an unfair battle! But make that a beautiful puppy and a lion cub and you have a playground. It doesn’t matter what’s going to happen in years when the lion is going to be 10 times heavier than the dog, it’s the fun they have today. It doesn’t matter who win/won, but do check out those claws … Check out more images after the jump. (more…)

For all those that thought cats can’t swim we have news for you. They can if they are being taught, and that’s exactly what Dr Bhagavan Antle did for the last 25 years.

A young lion cub is being taught how to swim

Tiger loves to get his paws wet for a good swim

Baby orangutan learns how to swim

A swimming tapir, enjoys life underwater

Born in Arizona on a vast cattle ranch and with a passion for wild and exotic animals, Dr Bhagavan Antle is now the director of T.I.G.E.R.S and is considered one of the foremost animal trainers in the country with more than 350 bit cats trained for movies, TV commercials, and live performances. Would we have fun if tigers would play with us? Probably not!

I salute his lions swimming lessons but I think animals should be left alone in their natural habitat and not used to entertain humans.

Researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have come up with a cheaper way to make ethanol from rice straw and other waste materials … cheaper by 30%.

A professor at the university’s Materials and Structures Laboratory has developed a catalyst that will break down plant-based materials resulting in a more efficient production of sugar. This sugar product is then mixed with water and heated to 100C (boiling the water away?).

More confusion on my part -

“The catalyst consists of a carbon material with multiple molecules attached to its surface. These molecules dramatically speed up the decomposition of plant cellulose, making ethanol production much more efficient.”

The bottom line – the catalyst can be made more cheaply making production of ethanol from non-food crops more cost-effective or about equal to what it costs to produce the bioethanol from corn and other foods.

If ethanol can be produced from non-food products, there will no increased food costs and adverse affects to third world countries, too. No?

Go, Tokyo, Go!

Categorized from threatened to critically endangered, sea turtles from the world’s oceans have mostly been hunted down for their meat, fat and shells (tortoiseshell). These days, the most significant threat for them is a commercial fishing technique called longline fishing, that uses hundreds or even thousands of baited hooks hanging from a single line and causes accidental sea turtle deaths.

There are seven living species of sea turtles and here’s a little bit on each of them. (more…)

For the last few decades, the Aral Sea in Central Asia suffered of what the Russians did, back in the 50s. They diverted the two tributary rivers into irrigation for cotton and rice crops and caused what scientists called an irreversible environmental disaster.

Aral Sea Nowdays (Google Maps)

The smaller bodies of water became much saltier destroying the fishing industry leaving only one single species of fish and also affecting the local weather.

But call it a miracle or whatever you like, nature knows how to heals itself when we stop harming her. It’s a real example for future ecological recovery and reversal projects. In 1990 the World Bank financed a project that involved several actions to reduce the damage of which the most important was the Kok-Aral Dam.

Aral Sea in 1964 – things looked better at the time

Aral Sea in 1997 – the ecological disaster became worse and worse

The project was finished in 2005 and just one year later an article in the New York Times mentioned:

In dozens of villages in the region, frigid green water now laps against long-abandoned harbors, and fishing vessels retrieved from open-air desert graves have been put back to sea.

The Aral Sea, which was once drained of 75 percent of its water, has this year taken on millions of cubic feet of new water years ahead of schedule, surpassing even the sunniest predictions made when a new dam was completed last summer.

Though it’s a miracle it’s not complete. Things are starting to look better only in the Northern Aral Sea, because the South is still both highly polluted and salty. Another critical example is the port of Aralsk that is still stranded 25km above the shoreline.

Seeing how things got better in the North, there is hope, though. It’s all in our power to change the world we live in.

Satellite images courtesy of EarthShots

Niue (I had to look it up, too) will become the first country to launch the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. The goal is to be the first country in the world for every child, all 6 of them?, to have a laptop. The population of the whole island is less than 1,700.

In truth, there are about 500 students in both Niue primary and high schools. The laptops are the students for life and are their library to the world said Jimmie Rodgers, the director general of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community.

The laptops cost about $200 and 5,000 of them have been ear marked for the Pacific. Education is a good thing. For a child to have access to the world’s information is a grand thing … until they ask, “What’s McDonald’s?” And want to know other such things Western as might spoil their paradise in the south Pacific.

Of course, education is not just having access to info but being able to discern which info is credible and relevant to the learner. No?

Dang it! These animal Olympic events weren’t on my TV sked and I am afraid I missed them. How come all the good stuff gets by me? Okay, how come most everything gets by me?

There is the Bear High Bar Gymnastic Event.

Pygmy Loris Climbing

Elephant Soccer

Goat Riding

What do you think about using animals for entertainment purposes? Maybe the animals could get a kick out of watching us perform.

Question – What did the one alligator say to the other after eating a missionary?

Answer – I love these people. They are soft on the outside and crunchy on the inside.

What was the coolest year, in the last 5 years? The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has the answer and apparently 2008 is. Even though we’re above historical averages after the first 6 months, the forecast is clear and temperatures will be the coolest of the past five years.

I don’t think this is something encouraging, because the Earth is still globally warming. The recent lower figures are attributed to La Nina (“the little girl” in Spannish) which followed the warmer El Nino. However, Climate scientists caution that La Nina is weakening and the second part of the year could become much warmer than expected.

Greenhouse gas emissions are still there and causing global warming so we shouldn’t celebrate as the past decade was the hottest of all times (or at least since 1850 when they started recording).

How is/was the weather in your part of the world?

Image courtesy of robertoriccobelli

Bus shelters are already useful because they keep people safe against rain or wind, but the guys at Fuel Miami, LLC decided, there’s room for improvement. So they did! The first 600 solar bus shelters will be delivered in Miami and will allow the company to show their clients’ ads without the need of being connected to the grid.

Saving about 2 tones a day of CO2, this may not be the big step in fighting global warming we’ve all been expecting, but we all know it takes babies steps to grow big. What can these solar bus shelters change? They could start with the advertisers to making them more eco-friendly or eco-conscious.

Don’t think the cost is a problem, but I’m more interested in knowing if the vandals would see it as a magnet or not. What happens when those photovoltaic cells broke, who’s going to pay for the repairs? Is that sustainable and at the same time, profitable?

via Ecolocalizer (Image courtesy of Tony Worrall)