Environment
nisbetmc | February 2, 2010A reminder for readers in Boston and Cambridge: Thursday this week I will be a panelist on a discussion about climate change and the media at the Kennedy School of Government. Details are below and at this link. Audio of the panel discussion will be archived online and I will post a link when available.
The big draw, of course, will be fellow panelist Andrew Revkin, making one of his first public appearances since taking a buyout from his full time position at the New York Times.
The Public Divide over Climate Change: Science, Skeptics and the Media
Seminar
Series: ENRP Seminar
Open to the…
illconsidered | January 31, 2010 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Information overload is pattern recognition January 31, 2010 Chuckles, COP15, Copenhagen Accord, Scorecard, BASIC, COP16, Solomon et al., EPI, WGMS, Usama, IPCC Attack Bottom Line, Cold Snap, Frank et al., WEF, WSF, China & AGW, Gates, OIC - Oct 2011 Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Land…
edyong | January 30, 2010This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science.
Look into the oceans past the sharks, seals and fish and you will find the tiny phytoplankton. These small organisms form the basis of life in the seas but if their populations get to big, they can also choke the life from it by forming large and suffocating algal blooms.
The waters of San Francisco Bay have never had big problems with these blooms and if anything, scientists worried that the waters didn't have enough phytoplankton. All that changed in 1999, when the phytoplankton population started…
illconsidered | January 25, 2010 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Global Warming News Sipping from the internet firehose... January 24, 2010 Chuckles, Copenhagen, BASIC, WFES, IRENA, Solar Cycle, Grumbine, WMO-GCW, NA Ozone, Himalayan Glaciers Bill Gates, Urban Heat Island, Cold Snap, GW & Natural Disasters, CRU, Late Comments Melting Arctic, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon…
revere | January 24, 2010It used to be my job to teach the environmental health survey course for public health students and air pollution was a topic I spent a lot of time on because it interested me and intersected some of my research work. One of the things I taught my students was that some air pollutants were very local -- carbon monoxide (CO) being a good example; levels of CO on one side of the street could vary significantly from those on the other side by virtue of traffic patterns or street canyon effects -- while others were considered regional pollutants. Ozone (O3) was my example of choice. It isn't…
razib | January 21, 2010Modern civilization has extremely deleterious consequences in regards to species richness, primarily through destruction of habitat. Because of these negative aspects of modernity hunter-gatherers have been idealized as a model of humanity at equilibrium with their ecology. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus lays out the revisionist, and to some extent now mainstream, argument that the American wilderness which European settlers encountered was actually an instance of "re-wilding" in the wake of native demographic collapse due to disease. But setting this case aside, what…
clock | January 21, 2010Busy with ScienceOnline2010 I did not have time to check out the new articles in PLoS ONE and other PLoS titles. Finally I found some time today, and here are my picks from the past few days. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. There are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Moonlight Makes Owls More Chatty:
Lunar cycles seem to…
drorzel | January 18, 2010One of the less attractive features of the New York Times is its tendency to feature little profiles of horrible people. They're not presented that way, of course, but that's the effect-- I read these articles, and just want to slap everybody involved.
Today's story on marital tensions caused by environmental issues is a fine example of the form:
He bikes 12 1/2 miles to and from his job at a software company outside Santa Barbara, Calif. He recycles as much as possible and takes reusable bags to the grocery store.
Still, his girlfriend, Shelly Cobb, feels he has not gone far enough.
Ms. Cobb…
illconsidered | January 18, 2010 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Instability News Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years January 17, 2010 Copenhagen, BASIC, UN Investors Summit, Berlin, WFES, IRENA, Cochabamba, Cold Snap, CRU Carbon Tariffs, Grumbine, In Case Of Failure, Objectivity Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food Production Hurricanes, Monsoon, GHGs, C & N Cycles, Temperatures,…
mikethemadbiologist | January 17, 2010By way of ScienceBlogling Sharon Astyk, I came across this piece that argues that much of political paralysis the U.S. suffers from is due to a dearth of effective community organizations:
The key to understanding the power of citizens' organizations is that representative democracy doesn't respond to the will of individuals; it responds to pressure exerted by groups. Those who organize to put pressure on the system generally get at least some of what they want, and the longer and harder they push, the more of it they get. Those who don't organize, by their lack of organization, make…
gregladen | January 14, 2010I agree that little has transformed the earth more than agriculture, but it is inaccurate to say that "30 percent of greenhouse gases come from agriculture." The reason that this is inaccurate is because what really counts (though it is not the only thing that counts) is the release of carbon that was previously trapped in fossil form. Such of the "green house gas" mentioned in the video does not involve fossil carbon.
Anyway, having said that, here is a blog post that is linked to the video you just watched:
The Other Inconvenient Truth
It's taken a long time, but the issue of global…
sastyk | January 13, 2010It is always hard to grasp the magnitude of suffering in Haiti - a place that should not be so desperately impoverished, that should never be the victim of so much suffering has an almost unending depth of misery. And it has only gotten worse over the last few years, as high food prices have driven people to starvation, as hurricane after hurricane has battered Haiti, and now the earthquake has caused immeasurably more suffering. The best most of us can do is open our purses, and we should open them wide.
Where to? Well, all the usual suspects are good - The Red Cross, Doctors without…
illconsidered | January 11, 2010 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another Week of Climate Instability News Information overload is pattern recognition January 10, 2010 Chuckles, COP15, Cochabamba, COP16, Mountaintop Mining, 2010+, Retrospectives, Winter, Arctic Oscillation Bottom Line, Carbon Tariffs, CO2 Sensitivity, Late Comments Melting Arctic, Methane, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures,…
hrynyshyn | January 8, 2010What's better for a book and its author: good reviews or a threat of a boycott of the publisher?
Today I received an email from one Gavin Bower of Quartet Books of London, a publisher with a respectable history of daring to handle works that no one else was willing to touch. The Joy of Sex in 1973, for example. I've never heard from Bower or Quartet before, but for some reason I'm on their media contact list. The subject: a blog post from Quartet's publisher decrying an alleged "orchestrated boycott" from environmental fundamentalists upset that Quartet has published climate change…
terrasig | January 6, 2010The US FDA has released a statement based on finding from the Texas Department of State Health Services on December 23, 2009:
The Texas Department of State Health Services is warning consumers, especially pregnant or breastfeeding women, to avoid consuming a traditional product called "Nzu" because of the potential health risks from high levels of lead and arsenic.
Nzu, which is consumed as a traditional remedy for morning sickness, has been found by DSHS food inspectors at two African specialty stores - one in the Dallas area and one in Houston. It was also found at a distributor in Houston…
emjohnson | January 4, 2010 Dolphins, such as this individual caught and used by the US Navy, could be granted personhood rights that protect them from such abuse. Image: United Press InternationalIn Douglas Adams' series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy it turned out that dolphins were super intelligent beings from another world who felt protective of the hairless ape creatures that were dithering about feeling self important:
On the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on--while…
illconsidered | January 4, 2010 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another Week of Climate Instability News Sipping from the internet firehose... January 3, 2010 Chuckles, Copenhagen, Knorr, French Carbon Tax, Retrospectives, CRU Melting Arctic, Methane Food Crisis, Land Grabs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Aerosols, Paleoclimate, Future Climate, ENSO Impacts, Forests, Wacky Weather, Wildfires, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Floods &…
nisbetmc | December 29, 2009Slides and synchronized video of the presentations from the AGU panel "Re-Starting the Conversation on Climate Change: The Media, Dialogue, and Public Engagement Workshop" are now online. Below I link to each of the presentations highlighting key themes or conclusions and the minute mark in the video.
Mass Media and the Cultural Politics of Climate Change
Max Boykoff, Ph.D.
University of Colorado-Boulder
Mass media serve vital roles in the communication processes between science, policy-makers and the public. This presentation reviews contextual factors as well as journalistic pressures…
illconsidered | December 28, 2009 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News December 27, 2009 Chuckles, COP15 - Post-Mortems, COP15 - CO2 Trade, COP15 - Renewable Energy, COP15 - REDD, COP15 - Dailies Future Meetings - France, Future Meetings - Bolivia, COP16 Carbon Tariffs, Vapour Trails, Retrospectives, Tipping Points, Next Ice Age, Dams, CRU Methane, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production…
milhayser | December 23, 2009If you've got a great idea, and you like money, here's your chance to win:
Carbon14, (www.c14time.com), a new outdoor and active lifestyle brand, is celebrating the launch of its three new lines of watches--AIR, WATER, and EARTH--by hosting a competition that will award $50,000 to one deserving contestant selected by the public! Whether you're developing solar technology, working to promote animal rights, or developing a product designed to positively impact the environment, you are eligible to win this competition!
Nominations and submissions will be accepted until February 28th, 2010.…