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The World's Fair

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profile.gif David Ng is Director of the Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory at the University of British Columbia - this is a just a fancier way of calling himself a science teacher.

profile.gifBenjamin Cohen is an Asst. Professor of Science, Tech., and Society at the University of Virginia. He studies the place of S & T in environmental history, policy, and ethics. He also writes other stuff.

mappsmall.gifTrying to find your way around this place? Like most expositions, we offer a map: Map of The World's Fair


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NatureLand: What They Used to Call the Environment:

EPA Official Fired Over Dow Chemical Dispute

Office of EPA administrator Stephen Johnson tells regional administrator to quit or be fired by June 1 after conflict with Dow Chemical.

What does Cuba have to do with the new $100 Barrel of Oil?

19 February 2008 was historic: here is what it suggests about the future of alternative energy and our fossil fuel lifestyle

World Energy Stats and Predictions, Tabulated

Within our lifetimes, energy consumption will increase at least two-fold, from our current burn rate of 12.8 TW to 28 - 35 TW by 2050

Eco-footprints and Academia (part 2)

How do we add moral and qualitative dimensions to the prevailing quantitative mindset about environmentalism?

Consumption and Recycling

Editorial commentary, in cartoon form: Buy More Stuff?

Synthetica: A New Continent of Plastics

Where Rayon is a plastic island off the Cellulose coast, with a glittering night life.

Nation's ecological scientists weigh in on biofuels

Current grain-based ethanol production systems damage soil & water resources; only profitable with tax breaks and tariffs

Engineers as Authors: Technology, Nature, and Sustainable Communities

You take technology and nature, avoid assuming they're opposed, and get a bunch of engineering undergrads to write a book about it.

Again with the Lazy Environmentalists

"Never has so little been asked of so many at such a critical moment." Michael Maniates, a professor of environmental science and political science at Alleghany College, contributed a compelling op-ed to the Washington Post recently, "Going Green? Easy Doesn't...

Unconventional Crude

A few weeks ago, the New Yorker ran an excellent piece called "Unconventional Crude" which focused on Canada's tar sands. It was written by Elizabeth Kolbert, who got a lot of attention a year or so ago with a...

Our government' stance on climate change - Canadians should take a look at this.

O.K. so our Canadian government (Conservatives, they be) gave their Throne speech yesterday, and basically didn't have an awful lot new to say about things of a climate change nature. This equates to, I guess, the continued stance of...

Sixteen Reasons Why Commuting Is Cool

I thought this blog post was pretty refreshing and kind of a nice way to look at things. It starts: When people hear that I spend two hours each way commuting to UBC from Surrey every day, the most common...

EPA Releases Endocrine Disrupter Screening List: But Where's Bisphenol-A?

Data on human body burden of chemicals -- too many to test & an EPA too slow to try.

George Eliot's Environmental Sensibility

That roar on the other side of silence.

The Toxic Behavior of Our Sponsor: Dow's Social and Environmental Catastrophes In Sight

Can PR barrage outpace environmental problems? The race is on.

The Sam's Club Model of Environmentalism (Buy More!)

On the the burgeoning commoditization of the environmental movement.

Cheney's "Humpty-Dumpty World": Not Just After Human Foes, He's Undermining the Environment All the While

When your grandchildren ask the inevitable question -- "Was Dick Cheney real?" -- you would do well to pull out this week's four-part series in The Washington Post to verify that he truly existed. Today's feature, the fourth part, addresses...

The Biodiversity + Pokemon-ish Project: It's a go.

Don't you think it's twisted that so many kids know what this creature is, but so few can go about naming the birds in their backyard? - - - Well, I had briefly talked about this before, more as...

Kids on a leash. The evolution of boundaries and its effect on environmental literacy.

(This image, by the way (or the color version of it), is the winner of Seed's Threadless contest) Yesterday, I heard on the CBC, an interesting story about Dr. William Bird, who is Natural England's health expert. Natural England...

What We Waste: A View of E-Trash

Of >20 million tons of e-waste generated globally; most goes to developing world.

This should work. A reasonable way to increase gas prices.

Recently in my neck of the woods, the Green Party of Canada has been suggesting the addition of a straight-off 12 cents per litre tax on the price of gasoline. This is mainly positioned as a carbon tax to try...

What We Waste: A View of Consumption

A series of images to help visualize consumption (every 5 seconds, every 5 minutes, every day)

Eat Local

Making the right choice for health, taste, bio-security, and ecological harmony.

Save the Earth: Ban NASCAR

NEXTEL Cup cars get 2 to 5 miles per gallon, and with leaded gas.

From Ants and Heptachlor to Mercury and Global Warming, the Same Racket

Lots of Rachel Carson links of late, and understandably so, as it would've been her 100th birthday this Sunday. Elizabeth Kolbert makes her the Talk of the Town this week....

Pollution and Human Life in West Virginia

Old quote: "A reality of soul starvation, of living death, that meets you every day..."

E.B. White on Rachel Carson

On "man's carelessness, shortsightedness, and arrogance." A small topic, of course.

Individualism and Energy Over-Consumption

Bringing Jefferson, Satellite Images, and Culture to bear on Energy Use

Go Carbon Neutral, Yeehaw!

Want to fight global warming without changing anything about lifestyle?...

The Consequences of Corn

More attention to the dangers of gung ho ethanolism.

Bees are dying: who cares?

"By relying on a single species for pollination, US agriculture has put itself in a precarious position"

'Environmentalism As Bad As Communism'

So says Czech President Vaclav Klaus, fan of Thatcher, admirer of Reagan, despiser of global warming rhetoric. Speaking to U.S. Congresspeople last week, he offered a few nuggets to chew on (but didn't mix metaphors like that). The Inter Press...

Organic Food Is Better For Us -- So Why Don't We All Eat It?

Peter Melchett writes in The Guardian (on-line) that the scientific evidence for organic food's healthier claims is clear and persuasive. (Melchett is "policy director of the Soil Association, a UK organic food and farming organisation.") But will that sway governments...

Flowercasting

How do horticulturists know when the cherry blossoms will bloom? An educated guess.

Ethanol Hype: "Corn Can't Solve Our Problem"

More destruction of ecosystems for new farmland and increases in CO2...?

Enough

The Logic of Sufficiency, as opposed to efficiency...when do we have enough?

Misguided Science of the Day

ecologically wise? "genetically-modified mosquitoes resistant to a malaria parasite"...

Environmentally-Conscious Scientific Field Research

About the ecological footprint of scientific field research, keeping the "field" ecologically visible.

More about those 50 fewer coal plants...a German Renewables Redux

Second thoughts about unpopular nuclear power? Not Germany.

"China Needs an Ecologized Social Democratic System"

Politics/policy/ecology/industry/the trust of one Chinese native in new party possibilities....

50 Coal-Fired Plants Replaced by Wind

Increase in wind power in Europe over the past ten years has been phenomenal.

Green Campuses

Are campuses crucial leaders in making large-scale, resource-demanding institutions more environmentally friendly? Here are the grades.

What's the Best Way to Know A Flower?

An entry about the basic concept of epistemology -- "how do we know?"

Nutritionism and Food Science: Not Really About Food, Not Really A Science?

"...nutrient-by-nutrient nutrition science...takes the nutrient out of the context of food, the food out of the context of diet and the diet out of the context of lifestyle."

Wind Blows; Mountains Lose; Mountains Win; It's a Mess

When it isn't a matter of science or not. It's whose science that's the issue...

State of Virginia Reports on Global Warming; Patrick Michaels was on sabbatical

Finally something that doesn't make Virginia look Kansas-like (sorry Kansasians)

Ocean Acidification and the bleaching of Spongebob Squarepants

So basically things aren't looking too good for Spongebob Squarepants and his buddies. The reason being that, all of this carbon dioxide we're pumping into the air is doing some serious shit to the oceans. However in this case,...

Solar Bikinis: The Classic Male Designing Mind?

Cool your beer, charge your iPod, and wear your bikini

Ecological Design/The ecoMOD Project

Another way to seek solutions to carbon emissions and over-consumption without going nuclear. Prior posts on the same subject: tidal power, DG, campus sustainability, solar investments, ecological footprints, and consumption more generally. Around Grounds here (they call it "Grounds," not...

Un-American, anti-capitalist, eco-freak poseurs

Opposing the cultural premise that individual happiness derives from consumer options.

Finally, Something We Can't Accuse Mel Gibson Of (a post about Mesoamerican astronomy)

Props to Mel Gibson, a note on Mayan and Aztec culture, and the city as observatory...

Waste and Abundance

"Faint light on stage littered with miscellaneous rubbish": Samuel Beckett on the human condition, 1969

Mirrors Will Save the World

"Scientists say the global energy crisis can be solved by using the desert sun"

Do We All Have To Live Like Hippies in the Woods to Save this Damn Earth?

"The Key to Modern Life is Strategic Ignorance." That's a quote from Joel Achenbach's story, "Another Way," in the Washington Post this weekend about an off-the-grid eco-settlement in North Carolina. (Some good pictures here.) He writes about Earthaven, an eco-village,...

Tree paints masterpiece (seriously)

Image resulting from tree "painting" by Douglas-fir for two minutes Nalini Nadkarni, a tree canopy researcher and a National Geographic regular, was kind enough to let me publish this interest piece that looks at the intersection of science and...

Climate Science Theater (Art! Science! Carbon Emissions!)

The Silencer (being performed in Blacksburg, VA, on November 1, 2, and 3, ahead of its London opening in 2007) is a play about Global Warming and Climate Science. How about that, a play about global warming and climate science....

Food Politics: Ethics and Dirt and the Dinner Plate

Amy Bentley, a Profesor of Public Health at NYU, has this well-done* review of Food, Politics, Food Politics, Morality of Food Production, the Ethics of Foopd Systems, and what not, at the Chronicle. The books reviewed in her essay are:...

Yummy Ethanol: To Drink or to Drive

Archer-Daniels-Midland CEO Patricia Woertz blasted ethanol for use in fuesl when she was with Chevron (7 years ago). Now she's acquired a taste for it, as the new CEO of ADM (supermarket to the world). The New York Times reports...

Superhero Needed: DG, an energy option in search of P.R.

Distributed Generation (DG), another way to reduce energy without the nuclear option

Campus Sustainability -- reducing energy use without the nuclear option

Do campus sustainability initiatives help? One way to work on energy issues without resorting to problematic nuclear promotion.

Auden, Science, and Nature (on the Infinite Variability of Socio-cultural Dynamics)

First, a quote, then (below the fold) the book I found it in (and, incidentally, the post title about infinite variability, is taken from the book, below): W.H. Auden: "The historical world is a horrid place where, instead of nice...

And what are we consuming, by the way?

This article by David Ewing Duncan, "The Pollution Within," is in the new issue of National Geographic. (He was also on NPR this morning.) So, while we're on the subject of consumption her at The World's Fair, I think we...

RoundUp Ready Round-up is Ready: (a) Atrazine and (b) Big Organic

Environmental Science/Studies in Review, Volume 1 Here is a rundown of some recent pieces of note w/r/t environment, science, and technology -- specifically, a few on atrazine and hermaphroditic friogs, and then a few on Big Organic (farming and planting...

Out out, damn mole! (The critter not the unit of measurement)

It's ironic but having just answered a scienceblogger question about preservation, I'm aware of a personal predicament that addresses some of the same ideals. Namely, I've got a critter in my backyard. This is what I saw on my lawn...

If Smallpox could talk - not really.

A little late on this one, but the scienceblog question of the week (of last week), reads: "Is every species of living thing on the planet equally deserving of protection?..."...