Deborah Brosnan swears she doesn’t court disaster. But it does seem to follow her around and she has cultivated expertise in what might be called environmental “disaster-ology.”

A marine biologist who specializes in the impact of natural disasters on ecosystems and people, Brosnan narrowly survived a plane crash after working on coral reefs in Asia and a volcanic eruption on the Caribbean island of Montserrat.

“I was out studying coral reefs, so I was even underwater and the mountain blew on me,” she wrote of her run-in with the volcano. “But being positive — it gave me a lot of information on how exploited ecosystems cope with these events and what it means for humans, knowledge we can put to good use.”

She turned disaster into opportunity earlier in her career after a major storm wiped out the mussels she was studying for her doctoral thesis.

“I thought it was a total disaster for my thesis … and then I thought, wow, here was an opportunity to find out how systems respond and to see what happens to the whole ecology of the shore.”

She is the founder and president of Sustainable Ecosystems Institute, an Oregon-based ecological organization of scientists and others. Read about her work in the world’s river deltas — which she sees as at high risk from natural disasters spurred by climate change — here.

When you write about the environment, your e-mail inbox fills up fast with pitches from companies claiming to have the formula for a greener world. Very few are compelling enough to escape the “delete” key. Some are just too weird to deal with. And then there’s this recent sally by the makers of the Biffy.

The Biffy is a bidet attachment for use on a standard toilet, and the promotional copy says it is not only superior for hygiene but promises a cleaner planet because it keeps excess toilet paper out of the waste stream. Take a look at the Web site for video of enthusiastic models uttering the immortal catch-phrase, “I love my Biffy!”

The promotional copy features a quote by the gadget’s inventor, Dr. Warren Smith: “Using toilet paper to clean our bottoms is like trying to clean dishes with a paper towel. Our product provides a practical and more natural way to be clean, while reducing an average family’s toilet paper consumption by up to 75 percent.”

There are plenty of ways to get around New York City, not all of them savory — subway, bus, car, taxi, bike, shoe-leather — but few offer the environmental cachet of the plug-in electric motorbike. Sleek, slim and silent, the Vectrix two-seater owned by filmmaker Michael Bergmann is definitely preferable to rocketing around town under almost any other kind of power. The ride from the East Side to the West Side one recent evening was an absolute pleasure, with less ambient noise than a golf cart as we zoomed across Central Park.

“I’ve always felt that enjoying life in New York to the fullest requires a way to get around New York,” Bergmann said later in an e-mail. “A way that’s quiet and up on the surface so you can enjoy the varied life and changing neighborhoods as you travel. That requires a vehicle that’s street legal (so I don’t worry about being stopped or having it confiscated), always available, that isn’t hard to park, that doesn’t contribute to congestion or pollution (air or noise), that can carry the amount of stuff one ordinarily carries, and carry a passenger as well. So as soon as I found out about the Vectrix I wanted one.”

Vectrix, headquartered in Rhode Island, first started selling its electric plug-in motorbikes in Europe and is now expanding in the U.S. market. The company bills its plug-in model as “an advanced zero-emission, battery-powered motorcycle,” with comparable performance to a 400cc gas-powered motorcycle.

Bergmann and his wife Meredith, a sculptor, use the bike as their principal mode of transport around Manhattan. The Vectrix gets parked and plugged in in the underground garage at their apartment house, where they pay for half a parking space, with electricity included. It gets about 40 miles (65 km) to a charge, which is enough to get around New York’s five boroughs, and Michael figures the company’s claim that it can get up to 62 miles (100 km) per hour is accurate, since he’s been able to accelerate uphill on the FDR Drive, no mean feat.

Bergmann has always been an early adopter of new technology, and he’s no exception here. You can see what he’s done in the film world.

He admits there’s one drawback: the price. His model cost $11,000. But he reckons that, because of where and how he and his wife live, “it will pay for itself in taxis not taken in two years.”

The hula dancers shivered, wrapped in towels, and then performed under a hotel awning instead of poolside during a chilly downpour on the eve of U.S.-sponsored meetings in Honolulu to combat climate change. The weather was strange all over the Hawaiian Islands, with winter storm advisories posted for the Big Island, where rare hail fell. A popular mountain road to Maui’s Haleakala Crater was closed because of ice.

On Waikiki Beach, some of the more plush hotels stacked sandbags along the water and beaches are narrower than they were a few decades ago.

“It’s been going on for the last 10 years, especially in winter when you normally get high swells,” said Patricia Tummons, founder and editor of Environment Hawaii , which chronicles ecological developments on the islands. “I think what may be changing now is the run-up — when the water runs up the beach, it’s just inching ever closer to the structures.” She didn’t have to note that these beach-front structures are some of Hawaii’s most valuable real estate.

Asked whether this development could be due to climate change, Tummons replied, “I really think of course it is. We’ve got our heads buried in the ever-vanishing sand if we don’t think what we see around us is the result of a changing climate … I think basically if you have no mitigation, in 50 years’ time Waikiki could well become the Venice of the Pacific. What are the hotels going to do?”

You bike to work instead of driving. You shop at the local farm stand rather than the big supermarket, and carry your purchases home in reusable bags. You haven’t used an energy-chugging lightbulb in years. But is the background for your computer search engine site still white? If so, you may be ever so slightly behind the enviro-curve. To get with the program, you may want to switch your search engine to Blackle, which is sort of but not really a black Google.

“Blackle was created by Heap Media to remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy.” the site notes. It also notes there’s been skepticism about how much energy a black screen saves and how much readability is sacrificed for the sake of that black screen. But they urge you to make Blackle your homepage, figuring that every time it loads, it’s saving a bit of energy, however small.

With thousands of the world’s most powerful environmental movers and shakers gathered in Bali to figure out next steps in combatting climate change, wouldn’t it be nice if somebody far from the fray, somebody sitting in front of a computer screen — somebody like you — could do something to cut down on the emissions of carbon dioxide that fuel global warming? That’s the idea behind the CO2Stats Project.

This online tool monitors Web sites and blogs for the amount of climate-warming carbon dioxide their visitors emit. Formulated by Alex Wissner-Gross and Tim Sullivan, PhD candidates at Harvard and Yale, respectively, the widget calculates how much power is consumed by all the visitors to a particular site and offsets it for free.

For each pound of carbon dioxide that results from Web traffic to a site where the widget is installed, the project buys carbon offsets from Sustainable Travel International. Users who install the widget pay nothing.

Wissner-Gross and Sullivan aim to make the entire Internet carbon-neutral, a couple of keystrokes at a time; they say the Internet is responsible for more than 100 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions annually. By contrast, U.S. power plants emit 2.79 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year. The CO2Stats own Web site has so far offset less than 2 pounds of carbon. Other sites where the tool is installed show comparable results. The widget’s creators pay out of pocket for the offsets but hope for sponsorship in the future.

To learn more go to http://www.co2stats.com.

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Take a look at the world through carbon-colored glasses. This double map, by Jonathan Patz of the University of Wisconsin, offers a graphic way to see the biggest emitters of climate-warming carbon, and at the countries that suffer most from carbon-induced climate change.

The top map shows per capita carbon emissions, the bottom shows the climate-related burden of disease in different regions of the world. It’s fairly plain to see in the small inset maps that are in color; it’s even easier to track in the big gray maps.

On the emissions map, the United States is a big fatso, the countries of Western Europe are a bit hefty, and China and India look almost as they would on a regular map and Africa and Latin America are tiny. The disease-impact map tells a different story: the United States, Europe and Russia are thinner than Paris fashion models and China is notably svelte, while South Asia, Africa and the Middle East are elephantine.

Patz, a professor at the university’s medical school and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, came up with the graphic to show the inequity of the consequences of climate change, and he sees this as an ethical crisis.

“Those most at risk from climate change are the least responsible for causing the problem,” Patz told reporters at a meeting of the American Public Health Association. “But there’s a caveat … I wouldn’t want Americans to think that bad health outcomes from climate change are out there, somewhere. Because we’re in a globalized world, an increase in disease anywhere could be adverse to our own health.”

More information is available in a Reuters story here and from the University of Wisconsin-Madison here.

Here's some advice you probably hope you never need: if you encounter mountain gorillas in your garden, don't make direct eye contact. In fact, it's a good idea to look down modestly. But stand your ground and if possible, don't be alone. And hope that the gorillas are in a big group too.

This advice comes from Arthur Mugisha, a program manager at the International Gorilla Conservation Programme, which works in Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the few mountain gorillas live. There are perhaps 700 or so.

As lovely as it may be to live near a national park that harbors gorillas, the big primates can be a problem to those with croplands near the park. The mountain gorillas are not shy about grabbing bananas or other plants they savor.

"These gorillas are intelligent and they know they are crop-raiding," Mugisha said on a recent trip to Washington to promote his organization. "So when there is an organized group that comes we can actually chase them without harming them."

Mugisha and others have organized the people who live nearby into human gorilla conflict groups to keep the gorillas where they belong and out of local farm fields. But sometimes people go into the forest to see the gorillas, and that's where Mugisha's expert advice comes in.

"If you are in the forest and the gorillas decide to attack, or when you are going to chase the gorillas in the garden, don't go alone," he said. "Go in a group. And do not separate yourselves, one going this way and one going this way."

The gorillas will be in a group too -- from 10 to 40 traveling together.

"The bigger (group) they are, the better -- the better for them to handle because they have got a bigger stake. They have got younger ones, they have got females and probably each group has got an alpha male which protects them. So he has more stake if he confronts a big group (of people), he knows he has got many (gorilla) kids to look after, many females to look after, the best thing is to retreat, not put up a fight."

Specific advice from Mugisha:

"Don't make aggravating noises. Do not separate the silverback from the young ones because it's his job to protect the young ones ... He will do anything, including grabbing you, in order to rescue the young ones. So when you are chasing (gorillas) do not stand between the silverback and the young ones."

And don't get between the gorillas and their exit path back into the forest, Mugisha said.

More information can be seen in the Reuters story here.

Here’s some advice you probably hope you never need: if you encounter mountain gorillas in your garden, don’t make direct eye contact. In fact, it’s a good idea to look down modestly. But stand your ground and if possible, don’t be alone. And hope that the gorillas are in a big group too.

This advice comes from Arthur Mugisha, a program manager at the International Gorilla Conservation Programme, which works in Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the few mountain gorillas live. There are perhaps 700 or so.

As lovely as it may be to live near a national park that harbors gorillas, the big primates can be a problem to those with croplands near the park. The mountain gorillas are not shy about grabbing bananas or other plants they savor.

“These gorillas are intelligent and they know they are crop-raiding,” Mugisha said on a recent trip to Washington to promote his organization. “So when there is an organized group that comes we can actually chase them without harming them.”

Mugisha and others have organized the people who live nearby into human gorilla conflict groups to keep the gorillas where they belong and out of local farm fields. But sometimes people go into the forest to see the gorillas, and that’s where Mugisha’s expert advice comes in.

“If you are in the forest and the gorillas decide to attack, or when you are going to chase the gorillas in the garden, don’t go alone,” he said. “Go in a group. And do not separate yourselves, one going this way and one going this way.”

The gorillas will be in a group too — from 10 to 40 traveling together.

“The bigger (group) they are, the better — the better for them to handle because they have got a bigger stake. They have got younger ones, they have got females and probably each group has got an alpha male which protects them. So he has more stake if he confronts a big group (of people), he knows he has got many (gorilla) kids to look after, many females to look after, the best thing is to retreat, not put up a fight.”

Specific advice from Mugisha:

“Don’t make aggravating noises. Do not separate the silverback from the young ones because it’s his job to protect the young ones … He will do anything, including grabbing you, in order to rescue the young ones. So when you are chasing (gorillas) do not stand between the silverback and the young ones.”

And don’t get between the gorillas and their exit path back into the forest, Mugisha said.

More information can be seen in the Reuters story here.

Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, generally has the mien of the diplomat that he is — dark-suited, well-spoken, calm, deliberate, serious. But on Friday he managed to poke fun at himself, or more specifically, his ears. In the end, he made a Star Trek allusion and likened himself to Dr. Spock.

At a World Bank seminar on actions to combat climate change, de Boer noted a slightly skewed introduction by saying, “Even though you pointed out that I was sitting in a different seat, most people know me by my ears anyway.” And in fact, de Boer’s ears are prominent features.

De Boer took note after another panelist, Valli Moosa of the World Conservation Union, refered to the “Star Trek” TV show to make the point that hybrid cars are becoming increasingly mainstream, saying this was “not a ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ thing.”

“You talked about ‘Star Trek’ earlier,” de Boer said, looking at Moosa. “If you want to make the money go where money has never gone before …” The packed auditorium broke up in laughter, many clearly recognizing de Boer’s riff on the signature introduction to the decades-old sci-fi series. “The question is, who looks most like Dr. Spock?” De Boer was making a point about improving the investment climate in developing countries, but seemed to relish the laugh he got at his own expense.

Moderator Ralph Begleiter broke in: “A lot of people in this audience have never seen that show.”

“Judging by the laughter, some of them have,” was de Boer’s comeback.

Minutes later, he grabbed his briefcase and left the forum, on his way to another flight to another city. Even diplomats know: it’s best to leave your audience laughing.