Environment
clock | October 4, 2009
Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 390 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com. Please use the submission form to add more of your and other people's posts (remember that we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays):
10 days of science: Astronomical art: Representing Planet Earth
2020 Science: Hooked on science - ten things that inspired me to become a scientist
A Blog Around The Clock: On Being a…
clock | October 1, 2009
Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 380 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com. Please use the submission form to add more of your and other people's posts (remember that we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays):
10 days of science: Astronomical art: Representing Planet Earth
2020 Science: Hooked on science - ten things that inspired me to become a scientist
A Blog Around The Clock: On Being a…
mspringer | October 1, 2009One of the nice things about energy is that there's many, many different forms of it. There's many, many different ways to convert between those forms.
Yesterday we discussed the problem of turning the energy in sunlight into electricity via the circuitous route of sunlight to electricity (in a space solar panel) to microwave beamed down to earth, to electricity in a field of antennas. The advantages are continuous operation and high collection efficiency, and of course the disadvantage is the truly head-spinning cost.
Solar panels on the earth's surface are also expensive, not always very…
mspringer | September 30, 2009In theory I like solar power a lot. There's a lot to be said for energy that falls from the sky for free for as long as we care to use it. But actually getting that energy to do useful work in an economical way. Solar panels are expensive and not terribly environmentally friendly to produce, and sunlight is only available during the day and only to the extent that the sky is clear. Getting energy to use during less sunny periods requires either lots of excess capacity during the day along with storage facilities, or alternate generation methods. The first is wildly uneconomical, the…
esiegel | September 29, 2009As many of you know, light pollution at night has become a big problem. It's a problem for flora and fauna, which rely on the "day/night" cycle that they've adapted to over billions of years, and it's a problem for astronomers, as the light pollution disrupts observations of the night sky. All over the world, light pollution is visible to anyone looking at the Earth, even from space.
But I've been watching a little bit of Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno, which is a series of entertaining, educational shorts about threatened species and the environmental consequences of eating them.
But…
illconsidered | September 28, 2009 Sipping from the internet firehose...
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 September 27, 2009 Chuckle, Climate Week, UN Summit, G20, CGI, Copenhagen, Bangkok, UNCCD, Subsidies Bottom Line, Planetary Boundaries, IceSat, UNEP, Overshoot Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures, Ozone, Paleoclimate ENSO, Glaciers,…
clock | September 28, 2009
Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 380 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com. Please use the submission form to add more of your and other people's posts (remember that we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays):
10 days of science: Astronomical art: Representing Planet Earth
2020 Science: Hooked on science - ten things that inspired me to become a scientist
A Blog Around The Clock: On Being a…
clock | September 26, 2009
Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 370 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com. Please use the submission form to add more of your and other people's posts (remember that we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays):
10 days of science: Astronomical art: Representing Planet Earth
2020 Science: Hooked on science - ten things that inspired me to become a scientist
A Blog Around The Clock: On Being a…
hrynyshyn | September 25, 2009A few weeks ago the nightly hour-long documentary series on CBC Radio, "Ideas," allowed Canadian climate change pseudoskeptic Larry Solomon an entire hour to make his case against the science of anthropogenic global warming. The producers offered not a single challenge to any of Solomon's arguments, despite the fact that practically every point he made on the science of the subject was either false or grossly misrepresented the science.
Solomon is a "respected" enviromentalist. But he has decided climate change isn't as big a threat as just about the entire climatology community fears it to…
clock | September 22, 2009
Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 370 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com. Please use the submission form to add more of your and other people's posts (remember that we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays):
Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 360 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You…
illconsidered | September 21, 2009 Sipping from the internet firehose...
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 September 20, 2009 Equinox, Copenhagen, Climate Week, US-EU Tiff, Border Tax, Subsidies, UNCCD, FAO Meetings Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica, Bottom Line, World Bank, Solar Cycle, Health Impacts, Grumbine Food Crisis, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Aerosols, Paleoclimate, ENSO, Glaciers, Sea Levels, THC, Satellites…
emjohnson | September 20, 2009
As part of the series of reposts leading up to my review of Frans de Waal's newest book The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society I present the third of three pieces that appeared after Ian Parker's 2007 article "Swingers" appeared in The New Yorker.
In my earlier pieces "Bonobo (Re)Visions" as well as "Bonobos and the Politics of Human Nature" I pointed out how conservative pundits were eager to jump on any criticism of this species because it fit their ideology of nature as "red in tooth and claw" (to use the line from Tennyson). In his response in eSkeptic Frans de Waal…
edyong | September 19, 2009This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.
Science fiction loves to play off the potential threat of threat of alien viruses. But a new study suggests that space travellers are much more likely to be threatened by germs from our own planet that become more virulent in space.
Warding off infections is a real priority for astronauts, especially if longer space missions to the Moon and Mars are to go ahead. People have a tendency to get sick in space and…
pharyngula | September 16, 2009Look at the interesting snake found in China — it's got a leg.
How can this happen? Genes are pleiotropic — they tend to have lots of different functions. The genes involved in making a limb are also expressed in other places; for instance, the Hox genes that specify identity along the length of the body are also reused in specifying identity along the length of the limb. What that means is that when the snake evolved limblessness, it didn't do so by simply throwing away a collection of leg genes — it couldn't, not without also destroying genes that functioned in generating its body plan.…
clock | September 15, 2009There are 23 awesome new articles in PLoS ONE today. 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. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed; How the Thermoacidophilic Archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus Responds to Oxidative Stress:
To avoid molecular damage of biomolecules due to oxidation…
pharyngula | September 15, 2009We've got a fine gang of nuts coming up through the religious ranks right now. There are some real lunatics associated with Sarah Palin: she's linked to her home-town priests, Ed Kalnin and Thomas Muthee, who are linked to Morningstar Ministries and Rick Joyner. These cranks have a plan.
Muthee is an international celebrity for his role in a series of documentary videos, seen by millions worldwide, that claim Christians can reduce crime, murder, traffic accidents, addiction, and environmental degradation by driving out, from cities and towns, demon spirits and accused witches.
I am most…
oracknows | September 14, 2009The silence is deafening.
Yes, I know it's a cliche, but it's really true this time. Last month, a major study whose results had been anticipated by the alt-med community, as well as those of us who consider it to be highly unethical pseudoscience, were reported. However, they were reported without fanfare, without press releases, without any sort of publicity whatsoever. Only a handful of bloggers who have paid attention to the issue (myself included) even noticed, and even I wouldn't have noticed if someone hadn't forwarded the journal article to me and asked me what I thought of it. So…
illconsidered | September 14, 2009 Sipping from the internet firehose...
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 Logging the Onset of the Bottleneck Years September 13, 2009 Chuckle, NorthEast Passage, Post et al., Nicholas Stern, WCC, Manila Conference Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica, Tariffs & Taxes, Walker et al., Magnetosphere, Late Comments Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Aerosols,…
clock | September 13, 2009
Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 360 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com. Please use the submission form to add more of your and other people's posts (remember that we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays):
10 days of science: Astronomical art: Representing Planet Earth
2020 Science: Hooked on science - ten things that inspired me to become a scientist
A Blog Around The Clock: On Being a…
clock | September 9, 2009
Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 360 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com. Please use the submission form to add more of your and other people's posts (remember that we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays):
10 days of science: Astronomical art: Representing Planet Earth
2020 Science: Hooked on science - ten things that inspired me to become a scientist
A Blog Around The Clock: On Being a…