Archives for February, 2013
Permafrost: The Tipping Time Bomb
Posted by Greg Laden on February 28, 2013 From Peter Sinclair: One of the most feared of climate change “feedbacks” is the potential release of greenhouse gases by melting arctic permafrost soils. New research indicates a critical threshold of that feedback effect could be closer than we once thought.
More on river blindness and related diseases
Posted by Greg Laden on February 28, 2013 We were talking about River Blindness. Trigger Warning: The video below is not for general consumption. Having said that you may want to watch it. The first part depicts the reactions of a handful of celebrities watching a series of shots depicting seven different related tropical diseases, and I must say, having seen all of…
King Leopold’s Soliloquy
Posted by Greg Laden on February 28, 2013 This is the book: King Leopold’s Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule. If you prefer, this is the on line version. I first became aware of, and read, King Leopold’s Soliloquy, which is not his soliloquy but a parody of what he might say according to Samuel Clemens, while doing fieldwork in the ex-Belgian…
Arctic Ice Loss
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2013 You all know that the Arctic Ice melts more each summer than ever before. In a few years, the Arctic will be ice free during the summer. The rate of annual melting is greater than expected even just a few years ago. Please note that the increasing melt of Arctic sea ice does not bode…
How Do You Get Sexual Orientation and Gender in Humans?
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2013 Humans appear to have a great deal of variation in sexual orientation, in what is often referred to as “gender” and in adult behavior generally. When convenient, people will point to “genes” as the “cause” of any particular subset of this diversity (or all of it). When convenient, people will point to “culture” as the…
City of Angels Will Dump Coal by 2025
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2013 
Last February 17th, there was a big rally at the Los Angeles City Hall where people demanded action on climate change and an end to our reliance on fossil fuel. The city of Los Angeles gets 39% of its electricity from coal fired plants, so that would be hard. But today, we’ve learned that “…Los…
How the US Navy is Leading the Charge on Clean Energy and Climate Change
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2013 
There will be a discussion on Climate Desk Live about this topic tomorrow, Feb 27th. Details and access to the event are HERE. Increasingly, the US Navy is leading the charge towards clean energy, which can in turn impact national security an even climate change. Through investments in biofuels, construction of a more energy-efficient fleet,…
The Bloggies
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2013 [View the story "Why does the science community shun the Bloggies?" on Storify] Why does the science community shun the Bloggies? I was shocked to discover that @bloggies is unaware of the reason that science blogs no longer participate in the contest. @bloggies noted: Prominent climate skeptic blogs tend to campaign for nominations, while other…
Graphene: Big promise for new solar technologies
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2013 
A big step in improving the efficiency of photovoltaic cells in on the horizon. A paper published over the weekend in Nature Physics describes the ability of a substance called Graphene to convert a high percentage of the energy from sunlight into electricity. Graphene uses more of each photon’s energy, and a wider range of…
CO2 is plant food, right?
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2013 See Peter’s original post here, which also covers the recent alarming finding by NASA regarding Eastern US forests. EG, ” The warming climate this century has caused new stresses on trees, such as insect pest outbreaks and the introduction of new pathogens. Scientists consider both climate change and disease to be dominant driving forces in…
Antiscience bill dies in Oklahoma
Posted by Greg Laden on February 25, 2013 From the NCSE: Senate Bill 758 (document), the so-called Oklahoma Science Education Act, which would have undermined the integrity of science education in the Sooner State, is dead. February 25, 2013, was the deadline for Senate bills to pass their committees, but the Senate Education Committee adjourned its February 25, 2013, meeting without considering it.…
Antiscience bill dies in Arizona
Posted by Greg Laden on February 25, 2013 From the National Center for Science Education: Arizona’s Senate Bill 1213 died on February 22, 2013, when the deadline for Senate bills to be heard in their Senate committees passed. A typical instance of the “academic freedom” strategy for undermining the integrity of science education, SB 1213 specifically targeted “biological evolution, the chemical origins of…
A Test For River Blindness
Posted by Greg Laden on February 25, 2013 
River blindness, also called Onchocerciasis, is the result of the infection of several different eye tissues by the nematode Onchocerca volvulus. The bacterium Wolbachia pipientis lives symbiotically in the gut of the nematode, and escapes the small roundworm to cause an inflammatory response in human tissues, which results in damage to the tissue. These infections…
Is Solar Energy Totally Bogus or Something that Gives Hope?
Posted by Greg Laden on February 25, 2013 
I recently posted a simple Internet meme suggesting that if we subsidized solar energy like we subsidized fossil fuels that this could be good. I posted that on Google Plus an it engendered way over 300 comments, many of which attempted to explain, often rather impolitely, that solar energy was inefficient or in some other…
Obama’s decision on the Keystone Pipeline IS a legacy making or breaking thing.
Posted by Greg Laden on February 24, 2013 
Is there a problem with John Abraham’s argument about Obama’s Legacy? John Abraham wrote a piece in the Guardian titled Keystone XL decision will define Barack Obama’s legacy on climate change: Does the president have courage to say ‘no’ to a project that will lock us into decades of dependency on this dirty energy? in…
Educate yourself about the Keystone XL Pipeline. Please.
Posted by Greg Laden on February 23, 2013 I was distressed to find many people who are essentially pro-environment and who generally understand climate change science being less than terribly shocked about the prospect of the Keystone XL pipeline being built. Then I began to realize that many people don’t realize the order of magnitude of the problem. I’m writing a blog post…
Make $20 and support a good cause at the same time!
Posted by Greg Laden on February 23, 2013 
American currency uses the phrase “In God We Trust” which is a clear violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution. This is to the First Amendment roughly like saying “No Guns Allowed” everywhere would be to the Second Amendment, but if we did that to the Second Amendment people would be up in…
Whoopie Goldberg on Twitter
Posted by Greg Laden on February 22, 2013 In the early/middle part of the interview.
Forward on Climate Rally – February 17, 2013
Posted by Greg Laden on February 21, 2013 “Thank you to the nearly 50,000 who demonstrated on Presidents Day Weekend at the Washington Monument, the thousands at 20+ solidarity rallies across the country, and the more than one million online activists who stood up and spoke out to tell President Obama that right now its time to move Forward on Climate.”
Amazing Scar Left By Tornado
Posted by Greg Laden on February 21, 2013 This is not new, but I just found out about it from Paul Douglas’s blog. Back in 2011, an F3 tornado touched down and went straight for over 60 km. The beast (that’s the technical for a big-scary-tornaod) was almost a kilometer wide. It left an impressive scar, which you can see in this photograph:…
Climate Change vs. Global Warming
Posted by Greg Laden on February 20, 2013 This is being discussed here, thought I’d show you this:
Climate and Weather: Does your TV weather reporter get it?
Posted by Greg Laden on February 20, 2013 
You hear, again again, that climate and weather are not the same thing. This has led to assertions such as “you can’t attribute a single weather event to climate change.” But climate and weather are not distinctly different. Climatologists and meteorologists have made statements like this because people do confuse and conflate current conditions and…
Money Missing “In God We Trust”
Posted by Greg Laden on February 19, 2013 
“In God We Trust” was added to American currency fairly recently as part of a right wing plot to break down the constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state. But there is some money out there that predates that moment in history, and if you want some you can have it. It will cost…
Duck Stamps and Duck Hunting
Posted by Greg Laden on February 19, 2013 I just put up a post in 10,000 Birds reporting on a recent study of duck stamp sales and duck hunting. There have been changes in recent years in the patterns of both waterfowl hunting and the purchase and use of federal duck stamps. Waterfowl hunters are required to have a duck stamp, and about…
Charge of the Lite Brigade
Posted by Greg Laden on February 18, 2013 
On February 17th, some 40,000 people showed up at an event in Washington DC in order to draw attention to the most pressing issue of our time: Climate Change. Another group of people also attended that rally. They represented the Climate Science Denialists, which in the US overlaps considerably with the Tea Party. They wore…
Ubuntu Linux Made Easy
Posted by Greg Laden on February 17, 2013 
I checked out the book Ubuntu Made Easy: A Project-Based Introduction to Linux by Rickford Grant and Phil Bull (No Starch Press). With any book like this, the trick is matching it to the correct user. If you are the kind of person inclined to install the latest version of Ubuntu on your computer, you…
Civil disobedience to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline
Posted by Greg Laden on February 17, 2013 
On February 13th, 2013 48 people risked arrest at the White House gates to call on President Obama to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. TAR SANDS ACTION
Meteor Hits Russia, Not. Maybe did.
Posted by Greg Laden on February 15, 2013 UPDATE: Somebody found a hole in some ice. This is a meteor streaking across the sky in the vicinity of the Urals: Numerous additional films of that event and some analysis are on Phil Plait’s blog, here. Here’s a FAKE video purported to be a crater formed by a fragment of that meteor BUT IT…
US Drought
Posted by Greg Laden on February 14, 2013 From US Drought Monitor:
Peter Gleick vs Heartland Institute
Posted by Greg Laden on February 14, 2013 
Peter Gleick, my sbling here at scienceblogs.com (see his blog here) is famous for a lot of things, but about one year ago he went up against the Heartland Institute and in a daring effort of investigative (if avocational) journalism, revealed that right wing conservative/libertarian “think” tank’s nefarious plans to interfere with science education in…
, which is now available for the 
