Google Maps now shows bike paths and bike lanes for Boulder. Click to enlarge!

Google Maps has just launched a new “biking layer” for 150 U.S. cities including Boulder. This potentially awesome feature should be able to give bike-specific directions, routing cyclists onto paved multi-use paths and streets that are friendlier to two-wheeled commuters.

Check it out at Google Maps by clicking on “bicycling” under the “more” drop-down menu, or click on the photo above to check it out here.

Dark green indicates dedicated bike trails (like the Boulder Creek Path), light green are roads with bike lanes and dotted green lines indicate roads with no bike lanes but which have lower volume of traffic or safer intersections.

You can also get bike directions by clicking the “bicycling” option in the “get directions” section. But be careful — Google still has kinks to work out. For example, Google seems to have no problem routing bikers down the Pearl Street Mall (where it’s illegal to ride your bike) or down Broadway through downtown (which is just plain scary).

Read more about the new Google Maps feature at DailyCamera.com, or check out this how-to video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Treehugger's Best of Green Awards -- voting is open now.

Waylon Lewis and David Quilty, of Boulder and Denver respectively, are up for Best of Green Awards over at Treehugger in the category of Best Ambassador of Environmental Culture. Via elephantjournal:

The Treehugger Best of Green 2010 Reader’s Choice Awards include 40 prize categories across 8 main topics, and there are some great names and friends of ours! that have been nominated, like Eco Salon, Derek Markham, Bike Portland, Nau Clothing, Bill McKibben, Huffington Post Green, Alexandra Cousteau, and many many more.

It’s vote-driven, so get on out there and make it happen for your local greenies, if you’re so inclined.

(One former winner lives in Colorado, too.)

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I don’t know much about the issue in question, but either way, making a change at all doesn’t sound all too easy… (FYI, the map on the story’s page is rotated; it is oriented so that the top part of the map points west).

They presented their opinion that the trail was too steep, erosion-prone and dangerous, and offered an option that would substitute an easier path from Hawthorne up and over the ridge.

Read on about The Great Goat Trail Debate.

In addition to the recent news development from the “Cove” team busting a restaurant serving illegal whale meat, here are some tidbits of “Cove” coverage from the aftermath of that film’s big Oscar win in the documentary category.

Plenty has been said about Ric O’Barry’s unfurling of a banner reading “TEXT DOLPHIN to 44144,” by folks like Mother Jones, Treehugger, the Huffington Post, Ellen DeGeneres, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (which gave the acceptance speech an award for “Fastest cutaway”), Louie Psihoyos:

Still, Mr. Psihoyos said, “it’s hard to get all huffy about that stuff. It’s like spilled milk.”

and O’Barry himself:

“I had butterflies in my stomach. I wanted to throw up on my shoes. But I knew that one billion people were watching, and I had to do it.”

Here’s what Psihoyos says he would have said, if not cut off:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The mayor of Taiji — the city that reluctantly starred in the film — responded to the film’s win by saying that “The Cove” was unreasonable:

In a statement reported by The Associated Press, the office of the mayor of Taiji defended the village’s practices and said “The Cove” contained statements that were not based on science. “There are different food traditions within Japan and around the world,” the statement said. “It is important to respect and understand regional food cultures, which are based on traditions with long histories.”

When asked about the win, the filmmakers have mostly sounded like this:

“The Cove’s” high-profile inclusion in the Academy Awards ceremony is important “because [the show is] the most watched program in Japanese television,” Psihoyos said.

There will also now be a “Cove”-inspired TV show on Animal Planet, tentatively called “Dolphin Warriors”:

The series picks up where the movie leaves off and, like the film, stars animal activist Ric O’Barry. Two episodes of the series — which is being executive produced by O’Barry’s son, Lincoln — have already been completed, although a premiere date has yet to be announced, Ric O’Barry said.

Animal Planet says the series may premiere in the fall, after “The Cove” debuts on the channel this summer.

Ric O’Barry is planning on heading over to Japan again in spite of his unpopularity with fishermen:

“Officials in Japan are threatening repercussions against university and community groups that dare to show The Cove. Dolphin-killing fishermen’s unions are threatening lawsuits against theaters that show the film. There are even some signs that I could face arrest in Japan, even though I’ve broken no laws whatsoever.

“We wont give in to this pressure. Instead, I am making plans to spend months in Japan with our Save Japan Dolphins Team.

Variety says that underwater cameras in fake rocks were vital to the film’s success. They tell us about a LucasFilm (think “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones”) spinoff company called Kerner Optical, which put HD cameras in fake rocks for the “Cove” crew:

Once in place, the cameras ran continuously. Each night the pic sent a team to collect the cameras and replace the hard drives, but the rock cameras were so convincing that they were hard to locate.

"Sizzle" features... this?

Have you seen “Sizzle?” The film is about global warming, but it’s no “Inconvenient Truth” — it’s more of a this-global-thermometer-goes-up-to-11 type of flick.

A mockumentary about global warming. What do you think? Better or worse approach than the straight-ahead documentary (Oscar-winners notwithstanding)?

Via the Colorado Daily:

“The film is not being used as a scare tactic, as so many others have, but to make the issue something you can approach and confront, which leads to a better change for the environment,” Barreras said.

The motivation for his latest film stemmed from his desire to create awareness and interest in issues like global warming by presenting them in an entertaining way, according to the film’s Web site.

If you’re in the Boulder area, tomorrow night the International Film Series hosts “Sizzle” and its director, Randy Olson. Following a free 7 p.m. screening of his mockumentary, Olson will stick around for a question-and-answer session.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Psihoyos and his band of Ocean activists helped authorities sting a sushi restaurant in Santa Monica that was illegally selling whale-meat sushi.

From a New York Times article:

Louie Psihoyos

With video cameras and tiny microphones, the team behind Sunday’s Oscar-winning documentary film “The Cove” orchestrated a Hollywood-meets-Greenpeace-style covert operation to ferret out what the authorities say is illegal whale meat at one of this town’s most highly regarded sushi destinations.

Their work, undertaken in large part here last week as the filmmakers gathered for the Academy Awards ceremony, was coordinated with law enforcement officials, who said Monday that they were likely to bring charges against the restaurant, the Hump, for violating federal laws against selling marine mammals.

The whale meat, as it turns out, is from the Sei whale, which are endangered but still sometimes hunted in the North Pacific under a controversial Japanese science program.

Read the full story at nytimes.com.

That’s the word from scientists at Colorado State University, who are frustrated that the U.S. Forest Service has yet to test their golden-colored seafood serum on a large scale. (The scientists want it sprayed across the forest using airplanes. The obvious question: What would that smell like?)

The Denver Post wrote about the possible solution this week:

“We don’t find any downside to it,” said CSU microbiologist Jim Linden, one of two scientists guiding commercial production at a factory near Loveland.

Dousing healthy lodgepole pines with the gold-colored serum “certainly is part of the toolbox of ways to counteract the beetle,” Linden said. “It is inexpensive and safe.”

This is the latest of several methods scientists have proposed to try to combat proliferating pine beetles. Others advocate spraying forests with insecticides, distracting beetles with pheromones and bombarding beetles with recorded beetle sounds that can drive them to crazed self-destruction.

Did you catch that? The seafood serum has to compete with recorded beetle sounds that can drive them to crazed self-destruction. Wow, that’s a tough battle.

Read more at DenverPost.com.

Jimena Zamora, left, who is part of the University of Colorado Student and Community Outreach on Renter Energy (SCORE), checks the temperature of the hot water in a student house on Monday. Resident Mariko McMillan, right, watches. Photo by Marty Caivano, Camera.

In a city where there are tons of renters, it’s tough to motivate people to spend money on saving energy. That’s part of why the University of Colorado’s Environmental Center is helping students living off campus chip away at their energy bills by visiting their homes to show them how:

Hosted by CU’s Environmental Center, Student and Community Outreach for Renter Efficiency — or SCORE — teaches students living in certain Boulder neighborhoods how to lower their energy bills by making their homes more efficient through simple and inexpensive adjustments, such as using energy efficient light bulbs or setting thermostats to optimal temperatures.

Mike Kuss, part of SCORE, puts a CFL bulb into a light fixture in a student house. Photo by Marty Caivano, Camera.

Of course, since motivation is the key problem here (and we’ve heard that simply educating the masses doesn’t always do the trick), SCORE is upping the ante for bribes:

If you are a CU student living in one of these neighborhoods you can receive a free energy visit: The Hill, Goss Grove, Martin Acres, Aurora (between Arapahoe and Baseline).

You’ll also get:

• $50 worth of free energy materials
• a Cosmo’s pizza for you and your roommates*
• a chance to win $200 towards one months’ energy bills

Students living in the areas served by SCORE can sign up here. Here are a couple of highlights from a recent SCORE energy visit:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Maria Downing and Nick Tamm are trying to get solar panels for the awning for their mobile home in Boulder.

A couple of mobile home owners in Boulder (who actually live in a super-retrofitted 1958 trailer that doesn’t look anything like a trailer at all) have gotten shut down by Xcel Energy in their quest to power their mini-house with solar.

Apparently, solar can only be put on permanent structures, and mobile homes, by definition, aren’t permanent. On the surface, that doesn’t sound unreasonable, but for Maria Downing and Nick Tamm, the issue is that their mobile home is their permanent home. And they don’t plan on moving.

(Also, their neighborhood is zoned only for mobile homes, and they have a 99-year lease on their land, so there’s no reason to think they’ll be forced to leave anytime soon to make way for some other, glitzier development.)

Downing and Tamm are frustrated about their own situation — but they’re also frustrated about the larger implications. Is solar only for the rich, who may be the people who are least at risk for rising utility bills? What about lower-income folks in Boulder who’s money is going, in part, to subsidize the solar panels put on wealthier people’s homes?

Read more about the solar mobile home shutout at DailyCamera.com.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s Carol’s shopping list:

• Table or shelf space for seed trays.
• Lights, either grow lights or a combination of cool blue florescent and incandescent bulbs.
• Chains, ropes, or cords to raise or lower lights during plant growth.
• Trays with small soil cells for holding seeds and soil.
• Sterile seed starting soil (called media).
• Seeds.
• Labels.
• Timer for lights — optional.

If you’re not into video, get the text at the Camera.