At least 38 dead, millions without power in Sandy's aftermath

Millions of people from Maine to the Carolinas awoke Tuesday without electricity, and an eerily quiet New York City was all but closed off by car, train and air as superstorm Sandy steamed inland, still delivering punishing wind and rain. The U.S. death toll climbed to 38, many of the victims killed by falling trees.

The full extent of the damage in New Jersey, where the storm roared ashore Monday night with hurricane-force winds of 80 mph, was unclear. Police and fire officials, some with their own departments flooded, fanned out to rescue hundreds.

Some in NYC to be without power at least a week

NEW YORK (AP) -- Consolidated Edison says power will be restored everywhere in Manhattan and Brooklyn within four days, but it could be at least a week for other boroughs and Westchester County because power is delivered to those areas largely using overhead lines.

 Repairing those lines is more labor intensive.

 On Tuesday morning, ConEd said that 337,000 customers were without power in the two boroughs. There were 442,000 without power in the boroughs of Queens, Staten Island, the Bronx and Westchester County following Hurricane Sandy.

 ConEd cut power to some neighborhoods served by underground lines as the advancing storm surge from Hurricane Sandy threatened to flood substations. Floodwaters later led to explosions that disabled a substation in Lower Manhattan, cutting power tens of thousands of customers south of 39th Street.

The Green Life: Top 5 Green Life Ingredients

For anyone who really wants to green their life, really wants to, I think there are 5 basic requirements… or, to make them sound nicer, we’ll call them ingredients.

Can you live a ‘green’ life without one of these? Well, yeah, but maybe not THE Green Life. Think of it like this: you need some basic ingredients to make a pizza — pizza dough, tomato sauce, and cheese (note that you can use non-dairy cheese, of course). Without one of these ingredients, you can call what you make a pizza, but is it really a pizza?

So, what are the 5 ingredients for The Green Life?

The Big 3

The first three involve things you do every day. Everyday activities have a profoundly stronger impact than once-in-awhile activities. That may be obvious, but it seems like we spend a lot of time talking about once-in-awhile things (clothes, furniture, kitchenware, laundry detergent) when talking about going green.

If you look at the top 3 contributors to global warming and climate change, they are undoubtedly transportation, electricity, and food (though, the order varies based on the assumptions and the location).

Global Warming Effects and Causes: A Top 10 List

One of the biggest issues facing us right now is global warming. Its effects on animals and on agriculture are indeed frightening, and the effects on the human population are even scarier. The facts about global warming are often debated in politics and the media, but, unfortunately, even if we disagree about the causes, global warming effects are real, global, and measurable. The causes are mainly from us, the human race, and the effects on us will be severe.

Global Warming Effects and Causes: A Top 10 List

1. Global Warming Cause: Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning power plants

Our ever increasing addiction to electricity from coal burning power plants releases enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. 40% of U.S. CO2 emissions come from electricity production, and burning coal accounts for 93% of emissions from the electric utility industry [EPA, pg. 10].

Top 10 Benefits of Bicycling

If you weren’t aware, today is National Bike to Work Day in the U.S. That means that even if it is the only day of the year you do so, you should bike to work today!

Of course, biking is such a pleasant experience (for most people) if you get out there and try it out for transportation purposes, you’ll probably find that you love it & want to do it more.

I was wondering what to write about for bike to work day, and have just decided to write on the top 10 reasons you should bike, while including a lot of cool, bicycling pictures. So, here we go: