Could watermelon — my favorite melon — also become the hot new biofuel? It’s not an new episode of “The Simpsons” — it’s just another fabulous roundup of the top 5 green links o’ the morning, here in Coolness:
- 350 vs. 450? The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajenda Pachauri, has come down “as a human being” for a carbon dioxide atmospheric concentration of 350 parts per million as a target for Planet Earth. (Our concentration is now at 387.)
- Why not just put up a bunch of solar panels in the Sahara Desert to power Europe? Some are trying, but Reuters says there are obstacles — not least of which is terrorism. (Hat tip: The Vine.)
- Watermelon: the next biofuel source? 60-Second Science says one in every five is left to rot in the field, but the USDA is looking at them as fuel.
- More than 20,000 orangutans have been poached, slaughtered or sold into the pet trade over the last decade, says a new report from Nature Alert Ltd. and the Center for Orangutan Protection — yet no one in Indonesia has been prosecuted for these acts. (Hat tip: 60-Second Science.)
- The world’s largest fruit bat — the flying fox — flies between countries like a migratory bird, reports a new study in the Journal of Applied Ecology. But it’s being hunted legally and could be extinct within decades, reports DotEarth.
Tags: 350, 350 carbon, 350 climate, 450, 450 carbon, 450 climate, 60-Second Science, bat conservation, bat migration, bat migration study, Center for Orangutan Protection, DotEarth, flying fox, fruit bat, International Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, Journal of Applied Ecology, Nature Alert, orangutan, Rajenda Pachauri, Reuters, Sahara, Sahara solar, The Vine, USDA watermelon, watermelon, watermelon biofuel
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