Environment
Category archives for Environment
More Rain Forest to be Destroyed by the Usual Suspects
Posted by Greg Laden on August 13, 2008 Unspoilt Amazonian rainforests covering an area almost as large as Texas have been provisionally earmarked for oil and gas exploration. A new report reveals that the area has been divided into 180 “blocks” designated for exploration by governments of countries that own the land on the western fringe of the Amazon. Their intention is to…
Bush Administration Prefers That Animals Go Extinct, Ruins The Environment for Everybody
Posted by Greg Laden on August 12, 2008 There is a constant battle between conservatives (aka Republicans, or stoopid people) and liberals (aka Democrats, or smart people) as to how to regulate industry. Republicans say “don’t regulate industry at all.” Why? because they are paid by industry to say this. If you think there is anything else going on here you are not…
Penguins adrift
Posted by Greg Laden on July 31, 2008 I noted earlier that hundreds of baby penguins are being washed, dead, onto beaches thousands of miles away from their native lands. Various causes have been suggested, including the idea that the penguins are swimming into unfamiliar and penguin-hostile waters in search of fish, diminished in supply owing to overfishing. Well, this phenomenon has continued,…
Sushi and Canaries
Posted by Greg Laden on July 27, 2008 The end is near, if you are a tuna fish. “The rage for sushi and sashimi, Japan’s raw fish dishes that overtook the West and have now spread to increasingly prosperous China, risks wiping out one of the Mediterranean’s most emblematic residents: the bluefin tuna.” according to a recent report. Shouldn’t be much of a…
Baby Penguins Adrift
Posted by Greg Laden on July 19, 2008 More than 400 baby penguins have been found dead on beaches in Brazil, hundreds of miles from their native habitats. It is not uncommon to find the occasional penguin (dead or not) wahsed by currents far to the north of where they normally live, the number of penguins being found now is unprecedented. Why is…
Sizzle: An Inconvenient Truth meets Get Shorty?
Posted by Greg Laden on July 15, 2008 Sizzle A lot of people are going to not-like this film. Some are going to not-like it because it is a lousy documentary about global warming. The fact that this is NOT a documentary (about global warming or anything) will be lost on those individuals, so they will have wasted their time and their ticket…
The Kent Beuchert Affair: Bias and Corporate Lobbying on a Science Blog Energy Blog sponsored by Shell?
Posted by Greg Laden on July 11, 2008 … Or just some kind of odd Internet Shenanigans. It turns out that if there is an organized effort to bias the discussion, it may be coming from the usual place … the trolls… As I’ve been following the new energy blog on Sb, something seemed odd. Tiny pieces of evidence filtered together … a…
Good Group Think on Energy
Posted by Greg Laden on July 9, 2008 Consider this question: Our oil supplies are down. And with rising concerns of global food supplies, the loudly touted ethanol now seems to be a no-go, too. So, in the coming years, what do you think will become the world’s most viable alternative energy solution? Me? I question the premise. It is not necessarily the…
US Government Says No to Solar
Posted by Greg Laden on June 30, 2008 I find it hard to believe that the government has ignored the need for solar energy to the extent that it seems surprised that anyone wants to build new solar plants. From the New York Times: Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium…
NASA’s Got a New Web Site
Posted by Greg Laden on June 23, 2008 NASA’s JPL has a new web site which focuses on surface conditions on one specific planet: The Earth. It has a Sea Level Viewer which is basically a very fancy menu for a number of multi-media presentations, and a list of current or proposed missions. I am not overly impressed with this, but it may…
Impacts of anthropogenic climate change many, varied
Posted by Greg Laden on May 18, 2008 Impacts from warming are evident in satellite images showing that lakes in Siberia disappearing as the permafrost thaws and lake water drains deeper into the ground. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory A new study led by NASA links anthropogenic climate change to a wide range of effects. The study involved scientists from about a dozen institutions…
Mark Bittman: What’s wrong with what we eat
Posted by Greg Laden on May 15, 2008 In this fiery and funny talk, New York Times food writer Mark Bittman weighs in on what’s wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too little home cooking), and why it’s putting the entire planet at risk.
Cyclone Nargis: What’s happening and how to donate
Posted by Greg Laden on May 8, 2008 In this May 1, 2008, visible image from NASA’s Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument on NASA’s Aqua spacecraft, Cyclone Nargis is … a Category one hurricane located 370 miles west of Yangon, Myanmar, moving east-northeast at eight knots…. Fishermen are advised not to venture out to sea.
Cyclone Nargis Death Toll Rises
Posted by Greg Laden on May 6, 2008 The Myanmar/Burma death toll is now experiencing the usual effects of poor information, limited reporting, and the outcome of being stuck between sensationalism and horror. Most agencies are reporting 22,000 dead with twice that missing. I do think that these numbers are meaningless at this point, as the Junta government can’t be trusted to be…
Cambrian Food Webs
Posted by Greg Laden on April 28, 2008 Food webs — the network of trophic (eating) interaction among the many species sharing a habitat or biome — is a much studied aspect of ecology. Food web and other similar phenomena such as dispersal syndromes are epiphenomena of evolution, resulting from the negotiation of competitive and cooperative interactions among many individuals. Indeed, the food…
Nature and Conservation News
Posted by Greg Laden on April 28, 2008 Canadian panel: Climate change is threat to polar bears from PhysOrg.com (AP) — A scientific committee that advises Canada’s government on endangered species said Friday that climate change is a threat to the survival of the polar bear, but the species does not face extinction. [...] Narwhals more at risk to Arctic warming than polar…
Trends in Inequality of Mortality in the U.S.
Posted by Greg Laden on April 27, 2008 Inequality in mortality is the most poignant reminder of persistent, often multi-generational differences in socioeconomic status (SES). Poor people are more likely to get sick and die than rich people. As a society develops over time, one would hope that this disparity would be reduced, but in fact, it often increases. Recent research published in…
Meltdown at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
Posted by Greg Laden on April 26, 2008 The Chernobyl Meltdown happened on this day in 1986. On 26 April 1986 at 01:23:40 a.m. (UTC+3) reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant located in the Soviet Union near Pripyat in Ukraine exploded. Further explosions and the resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an…
Happy Earth Day
Posted by Greg Laden on April 22, 2008 Happy Earth Day, Earth! Do you recognize any of these locations?
What’s in the air?
Posted by Greg Laden on April 18, 2008 Good question … what IS in the air? The simple answer is that the air … the Earth’s atmosphere … is about 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, with a tiny amount of some other gases including water vapor. Then, there’s dirt. I want to talk a little about the oxygen, one of the other gases (carbon…
The Human Footprint (NGS)
Posted by Greg Laden on April 12, 2008 Sunday, April 13th, 9pm ET/PT
Al Gore: New thinking on the climate crisis
Posted by Greg Laden on April 11, 2008 In Al Gore’s brand-new slideshow (premiering exclusively on TED.com), he presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting, and challenges us to act with a sense of “generational mission” — the kind of feeling that brought forth the civil rights movement — to set it right.…
Agri-tourism could help save colorful prairie chicken
Posted by Greg Laden on April 8, 2008 This is a photo of a Tympanuchus cupido male drumming away on the lek to find a mate. The lek is the traditional breeding ground of the prairie chicken (and many other animals uses lek’s) on which the males display, and to which the females travel to pick a male with whom to mate. This…
Boreal and South American Birds
Posted by Greg Laden on March 31, 2008 Fall, a very sunny, very breezy day on the lake, Amanda and I sitting in the cabin minding our own business. Suddenly, …thwack… … well, it was a sort of tiny miniature thwack, but a thwack nonetheless. Peering outside through the window, we could see the the last death throws of a tiny greenish bird…
Power Line Safety for Hungary’s Hawks
Posted by Greg Laden on March 30, 2008 Power lines kill raptors. Tens of thousands of raptors a year die on power lines. But there are ways to avoid this. On 26 February, the Hungarian Ornithological and Nature Conservation Society (MME; BirdLife in Hungary) signed an agreement with the Ministry of Environment and Water (MEW), and all relevant electric companies in Hungary, to…
Don’t forget the Earth!!!
Posted by Greg Laden on March 28, 2008 The Earth Hour, that is! March 29th is Earth Hour Day. From 8pm to 8pm in your local time zone, you are to switch off the lights and stuff. A number of astronomers out for an early evening look at the stars will thank you, and the Earth will thank you. More details here.
Saving the Red Breasted Goose
Posted by Greg Laden on March 28, 2008 Branta ruficollis is endangered. The Red Breasted Goose International Working Group (RbGIWG, which is unpronounceable) has a new species action plan to save this critter. Here’s some info from Redbrested Goose Central: Red-breasted Goose (Branta ruficollis) is a charismatic globally threatened species highly dependent on wetlands and farmed areas. In the last 50 years, the…
Berry Go Round #3
Posted by Greg Laden on March 26, 2008 Welcome to Berry Go Round #3, the blog carnival deicated to all things botanical. The previous installment, Berry Go Round #2, is located here, at Further Thoughts. If you would like to submit an item to the next Berry Go Round, you may use this handy submission form. The Berry Go Round Home Page is…
, which is now available for the 
