MS: Sustainability: Perception

A front group is an organization that purports to represent one agenda while in reality it serves some other party or interest whose sponsorship is hidden or rarely mentioned. The front group is perhaps the most easily recognized use of the third party technique.

A think tank (also called a policy institute) is an organization, institute, corporation, or group that conducts research and engages in advocacy in public policy. Many think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax exempt status. While many think tanks are funded by governments, interest groups, or businesses, some think tanks also derive income from consulting or research work related to their mandate. In some cases, think tanks are little more than public relations fronts, usually headquartered in state or national seats of government and generating self-serving scholarship that serves the advocacy goals of their industry sponsors.

The Gulf oil spill is recognized as the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Within days of the April 20, 2010 explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 people, underwater cameras revealed the BP pipe was leaking oil and gas on the ocean floor about 42 miles off the coast of Louisiana. By the time the well was capped on July 15, 2010 (87 days later), an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil had leaked into the Gulf.

Have you ever wondered where chocolate comes from, if antibacterial soap is good for your family, or how to recycle an old computer? If you've had these or other questions about the environmental and social impacts of the products you buy and use, Good Stuff is for you. It contains many of the tips, facts, and links you'll need to start making more informed purchases that benefit your health and the environment.

Find safe, healthy, green, & ethical product reviews based on scientific ratings.

"We score the world's largest companies on their climate impact to spur corporate climate responsibility and conscious consumption. Our goal is to motivate deeper awareness among consumers — that the issue of climate change demands their attention, and that they have the power to support companies that take climate change seriously and avoid those that don't."

See that long list of ingredients on the back of the bottle? Some probably aren't as safe as you'd hope...

NOAA provides Arctic information and a set of reputable indicators that describe the present state of the Arctic ecosystem and climate.

Model Earth's climate using historic ship logs
Help scientists recover Arctic and worldwide weather observations made by US Navy and Coast Guard ships.
Classify over 30 years of tropical cyclone data.
Scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center need your help.

the phenomenon known as "sensitive dependence on initial conditions." This is sometimes referred to as the butterfly effect, e.g. a butterfly flapping its wings in South America can affect the weather in Central Park. The question then arises — why does a set of completely deterministic equations exhibit this behavior? After all, scientists are often taught that small initial perturbations lead to small changes in behavior. This was clearly not the case in Lorenz's model of the weather. The answer lies in the nature of the equations; they were nonlinear equations. While they are difficult to solve, nonlinear systems are central to chaos theory and often exhibit fantastically complex and chaotic behavior.

The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996 to creatively foster long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.

How to communicate information to people 10,000 years in the future.

Here are the key points of the review written by the former chief economist of the World Bank.