It’s enough to make you grab a tissue: Minneapolis has tacked 16 days to the ragweed pollen season since 1995; LaCrosse, Wisc. has added 13 days, Winnipeg and Saskatoon in Canada have added 25 and 27 days, respectively.

The new research, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds the longer pollen seasons correlate with the disproportionate warming happening around the planet and attributed to greenhouse gas emissions.

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The benefits to your community and health are reason enough to shop and buy local. You have superior taste and freshness compared to a product that traveled 1500 miles to reach your table.  Locally grown is sold within hours, still full of nutrients and there’s no comparison in taste. It hasn’t been altered by irradiation in order to prolong shelf life.  You’re supporting your local economy by keeping funds within your community. Given a choice why would anyone not buy local? Why would anyone buy fake food over real food unless it’s not available to them? The definition of fake food…if it wasn’t around when your Great Grandmother was alive it’s fake food.

Today on my way home stopped at Sofia’s Produce to pick up  corn on the cob for dinner tonight. The corn had been picked less than an hour before. Of course I ended up buying more than corn, mouth watering tomatoes, peppers, blueberries, well you get the idea.

Snapped a few pictures with my iPhone, big thanks to Jodi and her collage maker program for combining my pictures into one.

Recommended viewing: Food Inc., nominated for an Academy Award in documentaries.

Be kind to your body – feed it real food. Move more, eat less, read labels.

Crews were working Wednesday to contain and clean up an estimated 3,319,708 litres of oil that coated birds and fish as it poured into a creek and flowed into the Kalamazoo River, one of the state’s major waterways.

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Photos by Jonathon Gruenke  – Associated Press

Ozone is the byproduct of pollutants released by cars, chemical plants, industrial boilers, refineries, and other sources. Ozone pollution is more common during warmer months because more sun is present, which helps create ground-level ozone.

The American Lung Association’s State of the Air 2010 lists these 10 cities as the country’s most polluted by ozone:

   1. Los Angeles, Calif., metropolitan area (including Long Beach and Riverside)
   2. Bakersfield, Calif.
   3. Visalia and Porterville, Calif.
   4. Fresno and Madera, Calif.
   5. Sacramento, Calif., metropolitan area (including Arden-Arcade and Yuba City)
   6. Hanford and Corcoran, Calif.
   7. Houston, Texas, metropolitan area (including Baytown and Huntsville)
   8. San Diego, Calif., metropolitan area (including Carlsbad and San Marcos)
   9. San Luis Obispo and Paso Robles, Calif.
  10. Charlotte, N.C., metropolitan area (including Gastonia and Salisbury)

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Senior meteorologist at AccuWeather John Feerick told the news provider that this “may have helped delay some of the plants from blooming as early as they may have wanted to“. He added that increased allergies can be put down to “the fact that everything is coming out all at once“.

Furthermore, high winds and stormy weather is expected to increase the spread of pollen: “We had a perfect storm this year,” Dr. William Storms, professor at University of Colorado and a clinician told the AP. “It’s the worst I’ve seen in 10 years.”

 

Click on the map below and your state to see the 4 day allergy forecast.

http://pollen.com/allergy-weather-forecast.asp

"Despite 1998 being the warmest individual year, the last 10 years have clearly been the warmest period in the 160-year record of global surface temperature maintained jointly by the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia," said a news release issued by the United Kingdom’s National Weather Service, Dow Jones Newswires reported.

"These figures highlight that the world continues to see global temperature rise — most of which is due to increasing emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and clearly shows that the argument that global warming has stopped is flawed," the Met Office said.

In related news, the World Meteorological Organization said the latest figures indicate that 2009 will go down in the books as the fifth warmest year — 0.44 degrees Celsius warmer than the long-term average of 14 degrees C (57 degrees Fahrenheit), Dow Jones reported.

HealthDay

General Motors Corp. said Tuesday its Chevrolet Volt rechargeable electric car should get 230 miles per gallon of gasoline in city driving, more than four times the mileage of the current champion, the Toyota Prius.

GM: Volt To Get 230 MPG In City – Detroit Local News Story – WDIV Detroit

The 10 Worst U.S. Cities for Allergies:

1. Louisville, Kentucky
2. Knoxville, Tennessee
3. Charlotte, North Carolina
4. Madison, Wisconsin
5. Wichita, Kansas
6. McAllen, Texas
7. Greensboro, North Carolina
8. Dayton, Ohio
9. Little Rock, Arkansas
10. Augusta, Georgia

Women sit on the bed of an ice hotel during a photo opportunity in the Alpha Resort-Tomamu’s ice village in Shimukappu town, Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido February 3, 2009. The hotel where dining room, bed room and bath room are made out of ice, charges 80,000 yen (US $696) for two per night and provides dinner served on an ice plate. It opens until Feb 15, 2009.

Snow Resort: Alpha Resort-Tomamu’s ice village in Japan