Environment
jstemwedel | April 24, 2009As captured in SprogCast #7, the Free-Ride offspring consider Mike Dunford's Earth Day resolutions meme. We discover that a kid's sense of scale is kind of different from a grown-up's.
You can grab the mp3 here. The approximate transcript of the conversation follows.
Dr. Free-Ride: I think I told you guys that we were going to talk again on something Earth Day-related, even though Earth Day was back on Wednesday.
Elder offspring: Yeah ...
Younger offspring: But we already talked about Earth Day!
Dr. Free-Ride: Sure, but I said we were going to do more. First of all, do you guys know what…
scientificactivist | April 24, 2009Earlier I published a post about an interesting article by Andrew Revkin in today's New York Times about industry's willful ignorance of global warming science. There was an interesting quote in there that I didn't mention earlier about how journalistic practices enabled this campaign of misinformation:
George Monbiot, a British environmental activist and writer, said that by promoting doubt, industry had taken advantage of news media norms requiring neutral coverage of issues, just as the tobacco industry once had.
Will Bunch of Attytood already has some good commentary about this quote as…
scientificactivist | April 24, 2009The idea stated in the title of this blog post is not novel--far from it, in fact. We have known for a long time that the auto industry, the oil industry, and others with a vested interest have engaged in a long-running campaign of misinformation to discredit the science behind global warming. Manufacturing doubt is a common strategy employed by those whose agenda falls on the wrong side of scientific fact. This includes creationists, pseudoscientists, global warming denialists, HIV denialists, and, very notably, the tobacco industry's notorious decades-long campaign to deny the link between…
grrlscientist | April 24, 2009tags: earth day, green living, environmentally-friendly offices, work space, streaming video
This video offers advice on how to be green at work by suggesting a few easy changes that you and your co-workers can make to save the environment [2:02]
sciencewoman | April 22, 2009Alice and I have been talking about the big and small ways that universities could act to improve the environment, but Earth Day is also about making personal changes to lessen your environmental impact.
So it's fitting that Mike Dunford has issued us an Earth Day challenge:
I'd like you to take a minute or two to come up with three things that you can do to be more environmentally friendly. The first should be something that's small, and easy to do. The second should be more ambitious - something you'll try to do, but might not manage to pull off. The third should be something you can do to…
skookumchick | April 22, 2009Today for me consisted of one PhD defense (I was on the committee; it was successfully defended, congrats Dr. Ken!), a meeting about ADVANCE, 2 hrs of class, another PhD meeting that I'm on the committee of, and then a bunch of following up with folks. So it's been pretty packed, as usual. (Tomorrow looks quite humane in contrast!)
But I didn't want to let today slip by without acknowledging that it is Earth Day. I thought about titling this post "Happy Earth Day!" but it really isn't, is it? The earth is in a mess, global warming is terrifying, and so is the general apathy towards global…
jstemwedel | April 22, 2009Mike Dunford initiates a meme for Earth Day 2009:
I'd like you to take a minute or two to come up with three things that you can do to be more environmentally friendly. The first should be something that's small, and easy to do. The second should be more ambitious - something you'll try to do, but might not manage to pull off. The third should be something you can do to improve something you're already doing.
I love this meme! No matter what habits you've already cultivated (and we've cultivated a few), there's always room to optimize them. So here are my Earth Day 2009 resolutions:…
sb admin | April 22, 2009The first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970, and it heralded a new era in the US. The New Yorkerâs Elizabeth Kolbert explains:
Among those who seemed unmoved was President Richard Nixon. He avoided the festivities and made no public comment on them. (One of his aides, John Whitaker, later acknowledged that the Administration had been âtotally unpreparedâ for the wave of environmental activism âthat was about to engulf us.â) Nevertheless, even Nixon seems to have got the message. Three months afterward, he created the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and…
tqa | April 22, 2009
Just in case you forgot (I did, somehow), today is Earth Day. The best bloggy way I can think of to celebrate Earth Day is to start a new meme. This one is on Earth Day resolutions.
I'd like you to take a minute or two to come up with three things that you can do to be more environmentally friendly. The first should be something that's small, and easy to do. The second should be more ambitious - something you'll try to do, but might not manage to pull off. The third should be something you can do to improve something you're already doing.
I'll start:
Small: From now on, all laundry will…
jjacquet | April 21, 2009"We are all parasites," a friend recently remarked as our train moved past the graffiti covered walls of Berlin. "Anyone who does not understand this--or thinks that somehow the good that they do in this world outweighs the bad--is delusional."
She is a scientist working for the UK Energy Saving Trust, which markets a low carbon lifestyle to the British public. She entertains very few romantic notions of environmentalism.
"I think if we really looked at the life cycle of human beings we would get some very surprising results," she said. "I am pretty sure we need lazy people kept happy by…
illconsidered | April 20, 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 April 19, 2009 Chuckle, Top Stories:Rapid Sea Level Rise, Endangerment Finding, Red River Flooding Melting Arctic, Arctic Geopolitics, Antarctica, Cash4Clunkers, Aerosols, Grumbine, Copenhagen Survey Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, ENSO, Sea Levels, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Corals, Climate Refugees, Wildfires…
cwilcox | April 16, 2009The snows are melting (we hope), the flowers are starting to bloom, and here in FL it's not quite obnoxiously hot out. It's spring, and with it comes one of my favorite yearly holidays - Earth Day!
That's right - April 22nd is Earth Day 2009. Started in the 1970s by a smart senator from Wisconsin as a way to "shake up the political establishment and force this issue onto the national agenda", Earth Day has been pushing for environmental action for almost 40 years.
Lots of communities have organized fairs, festivals, or clean-ups to celebrate. But even if you don't want to join the masses at…
illconsidered | April 13, 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 April 12, 2009 Chuckle, Top Stories:Bonn, Red River Flooding, Ecological Deficits, 2+ Degrees Melting Arctic, Arctic Geopolitics, Antarctica, Polar Conference, Aerosols, Tornado Research, Late Comments Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures, Ozone Hole, Paleoclimate, ENSO, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Satellites…
clock | April 10, 2009We have recently covered interesting reproductive adaptations in mammals, birds, insects, flatworms, plants and protists. For the time being (until I lose inspiration) I'll try to leave cephalopod sex to the experts and the pretty flower sex to the chimp crew.
In the meantime, I want to cover another Kingdom - the mysterious world of Fungi. And what follows is not just a cute example of a wonderfully evolved reproductive strategy, and not just a way to couple together my two passions - clocks and sex - but also (at the very end), an opportunity to post some of my own hypotheses online.…
illconsidered | April 6, 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 Information overload is pattern recognition April 5, 2009 Chuckle, Top Stories:Red River, Bonn, G-20, USNA Climate Summit, GLOBE, Tim DeChristopher, Grumbine, Sunspots Melting Arctic, Wang & Overland, Geopolitics, Methane, Antarctica, Wilkins, Wordie, Polar Conference, Late Comments Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs,…
nisbetmc | April 2, 2009
This week's NY Times magazine runs a cover story by Nicholas Dawidoff on Freeman Dyson and his doubts about the urgency of climate change. Many critics have decried the article as another leading example of false journalistic balance.
Yet I think there are much deeper issues at play here. On one hand, the social scientist in me views Dawidoff's journalistic narrative as a sociologically nuanced take on what happens when policy debates are simplistically reduced down to a matter of "sound science" and "inconvenient truths" rather than decisions involving values and trade-offs. On the other…
grrlscientist | April 2, 2009tags: Bumblebees, Bombus species, Hymenoptera, insects, entomology, natural history
Common Eastern Bumblebee, Bombus impatiens.
This species is often relied upon to pollinate commercial food crops,
such as tomatoes, that are often grown in agricultural greenhouses.
Image: Wikipedia [larger view].
The Bumblebees, Bombus species, are among the most popular of all insects. Their black-and-yellow fuzz, large round bodies, and bumbling, buzzing flight make them appear almost cuddly, almost like the "teddy bears" of insects. I have many childhood memories of watching these appealing gentle…
gregladen | April 1, 2009Greetings Science and Culture Enthusiasts!
This April promises to be filled with engaging and thought-provoking science and culture programming from the Bell Museum of Natural History. In addition to our Cafe Scientifique and Science Trivia programs, we are planning multiple outdoor field trips as well as hosting a special Earth Day film series event. Attached you will find detailed program information. We hope to see you this month!
*_SCIENCE + CULTURE PROGRAMS_*
*Café Scientifique: Honey Bees and Human Health Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 7 p.m. Bryant-Lake Bowl, Uptown 810 W. Lake St.,…
mspringer | March 31, 2009I have a Fermi problem for you. By the very nature of a Fermi problem, a precise answer is impossible, we're merely looking for a justified order-of-magnitude estimate. Here goes:
During last week's Earth Hour event, what amount of CO2 was not released that otherwise would have been? What is that number in terms of percentage reduction compared to the total worldwide CO2 release during an equivalent time period not during Earth Hour?
Now I'm not knocking the idea. I like to see people avoid trashing the biosphere too badly. Doubly so when it's possible to shave some money off of the…
clock | March 31, 2009Month Of Conception Linked To Birth Defects In United States:
A study published in the April 2009 issue of the medical journal Acta Pædiatrica is the first to report that birth defect rates in the United States were highest for women conceiving in the spring and summer.
Action Video Games Improve Vision, New Research Shows:
Video games that involve high levels of action, such as first-person-shooter games, increase a player's real-world vision, according to research in Nature Neuroscience March 29.
In The Age Of Facebook, Researcher Plumbs Shifting Online Relationships:
A University of…