Environment
nisbetmc | December 22, 2008At The Yale Climate Forum, Lisa Palmer contributes a very useful feature reviewing various strategies for how scientists can write effective newspaper op-eds on climate change.
Most of the first half of the feature focuses on examples that target national elite newspapers like the NY Times or WPost, either grabbing attention by using heated language, i.e. arguing against "deniers" that "infest" public discourse, or by proposing bigger picture policy initiatives such as boosting long term funding for NASA's Earth observing system. (Using too much heat, of course, often backfires.)
These types…
illconsidered | December 22, 2008 Another Week of Climate Disruption News
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) December 21, 2008 Top Stories:Poznan, AGU, Abrupt Climate Change, Methane Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica, Recession, Year End, Cosmic Rays, Earth Hour, 350 ppm, Grumbine, Free Science Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperature Record, Paleoclimate, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Corals, Wacky Weather…
tlambert | December 21, 2008So, I after looking at who was on Inhofe's list of scientists that he claims dispute global warming and on the Discovery Institute's list of Darwin dissentors, I thought I should see who was Inhofe's list and this list of HIV/AIDS "rethinkers". The HIV/AIDS list seems to be even dodgier than Inhofe's, including chiropracters, homeopaths, poets and this Lovecraft-inspired entry:
Ivy Shoots. PhD student, Miskatonic University, Massachusetts; Fulbright Scholar
Anyway, there were five names on both lists:
Eduardo Ferreyra. President of the Argentine Foundation for a Scientific Ecology, which…
pharyngula | December 19, 2008So a wingnut gets a cartoonish version of religious history:
Ritualistic Baal worship, in sum, looked a little like this: Adults would gather around the altar of Baal. Infants would then be burned alive as a sacrificial offering to the deity. Amid horrific screams and the stench of charred human flesh, congregants - men and women alike - would engage in bisexual orgies. The ritual of convenience was intended to produce economic prosperity by prompting Baal to bring rain for the fertility of "mother earth."
And what do you think that reminds him of? I think I'm wrong: he's not making a…
ddobbs | December 18, 2008Atop other Obama appointments, this is one I suspect America's scientists will welcome. From the Washington Post:
Report: Holdren to Lead White House Science Policy
By Joel Achenbach
President-elect Obama will announce this weekend that he has selected physicist John Holdren, who has devoted much of his career to energy and environmental research, as his White House science adviser, according to a published report today.
The Obama transition office would not confirm Holdren's selection. Last night, asked by The Post to comment on the science adviser search, Holdren responded by e-mail that…
tlambert | December 18, 2008The Australian seems to have realized that their delight over Rudd's ETS was a giveaway and they are trying to provide some cover. Today we have a piece from Henry Ergas opposing the scheme:
As for the emissions trading scheme, if the main emitters are not reducing their emissions -- as the Government's 5 per cent target assumes -- why go it alone?
And a piece from Bob Carter with some almighty whoppers about the science.
First, global temperature warmed slightly in the late 20th century and has been cooling since 2002. Neither the warming nor the cooling were of unusual rate or magnitude…
nisbetmc | December 17, 2008Over at the Columbia Journalism Review, Curtis Brainard offers a must-read interview with the NY Times Andrew Revkin, the environment beat's most influential reporter. Revkin has been covering the environment for a quarter century and was recently awarded by Columbia University the prestigious Chancellor Award for sustained career achievement.
At the award ceremony, Revkin asserted again his view that climate change is not the dominant story of our time. Rather, as he puts it, climate change is a symptom of the much bigger challenge of sustainability: coming to terms with explosive…
illconsidered | December 15, 2008 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) December 14, 2008 Top Stories:Poznan, EU 20/20/20 Plan, Recession Melting Arctic, Wilkins SatWebCam, Methane, CCPI, Late Comment Food Crisis, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Carbon Cycle, Feedbacks, Paleoclimate, ENSO, Glaciers, Sea Levels Impacts, Forests, Corals, Climate Refugees, Wacky Weather, Floods & Droughts Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings, Sequestration,…
gregladen | December 14, 2008Math Gains Reported for U.S. Students
American fourth- and eighth-grade students made solid achievement gains in math in recent years and in two states showed spectacular progress, an international survey of student achievement released on Tuesday found. Science performance was flat.
NYT
ZImbabwe: The New Zaire
Zimbabwe: Cholera introduced by West from PhysOrg.com
(AP) -- The Zimbabwean government on Saturday accused the West of deliberately starting the country's cholera epidemic, stepping up a war of words with the regime's critics as the humanitarian crisis deepened.
[...]…
mspringer | December 13, 2008I dislike the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still, and I haven't even seen it. Not for the usual reasons - for instance, I think Keanu Reeves is a good actor when used in the right roles, and "space alien" is certainly one of those roles. I dislike the premise. Some alien species comes down and declares that it likes the other earth species more than it likes the smart monkeys. Therefore it demands that the smart monkeys stop their tool use or it will kill them all.
I suppose it would be too simple for the aliens just to drop the blueprints for some of their own snazzy tools so that…
clock | December 12, 2008Boy Or Girl? It's In The Father's Genes:
A Newcastle University study involving thousands of families is helping prospective parents work out whether they are likely to have sons or daughters. The work by Corry Gellatly, a research scientist at the university, has shown that men inherit a tendency to have more sons or more daughters from their parents. This means that a man with many brothers is more likely to have sons, while a man with many sisters is more likely to have daughters.
The Last Neandertals? Late Neandertals And Modern Human Contact In Southeastern Iberia:
It is widely accepted…
jstemwedel | December 11, 2008Back at the end of November, Martin wrote a post on the ethics of overpopulation, in which he offered these assertions:
It is unethical for anyone to produce more than two children. (Adoption of orphans, on the other hand, is highly commendable.)
It is unethical to limit the availability of contraceptives, abortion, surgical sterilisation and adoption.
It is unethical to use public money to support infertility treatments. Let those unfortunate enough to need such treatment pay their own way or adopt. And let's put the money into subsidising contraceptives, abortion, surgical sterilisation…
nisbetmc | December 9, 2008Over at George Mason's Center for Climate Change Communication, they are hosting a poll asking readers to vote for the 2008 Climate Change Communicator of the Year. Among the choices are such notables as Thomas Friedman, Bill McKibbon, John Warner, and Chevron's "Will You Join Us" Campaign.
But my vote would be for a name not on that list: the Reverend Richard Cizik, VP for Governmental Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals. Cizik is a perfect spokesperson for a hard to mobilize segment of Republican-leaning America. Not only does he have credibility among Evangelicals, but…
grrlscientist | December 9, 2008tags: evolution, biogeography, ornithology, birds, avian
Kolo Sunset.
Photo credit: Christopher E. Filardi, American Museum of Natural History
(Click on image for a larger picture).
Two of my ornithologist colleagues, Chris Filardi and Rob Moyle, published a paper in the top-tier research journal, Nature. This paper is especially exciting because it shows that oceanic islands are not necessarily the evolutionary "dead ends" that they have traditionally been portrayed to be. In fact, Chris and Rob's data show that a group of birds have actually accomplished what scientists had never…
pharyngula | December 8, 2008Please go away, Mr Bush. And please, President-elect Obama, clear away the rotting debris of this ghastly administration. The latest example of dreadful Bush appointees: Stephen Johnson, head of the EPA. Asked about the evolution/creation debate, this is what he had to say:
It's not a clean-cut division. If you have studied at all creationism vs. evolution, there's theistic or God-controlled evolution and there's variations on all those themes.
Wobble and waffle. Religion and science, it's all the same to him.
Now you might say that maybe this is irrelevant — as the EPA chief, he's just a…
clock | December 8, 2008There are 14 new articles in PLoS ONE today, as well as new papers in PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine.
As always, for PLoS ONE articles, 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, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click.
Here are my own picks for the week- awesome papers! - you go and look for your own favourites:
The Worldwide Variation in Avian Clutch Size across Species and Space:
Why do some bird species lay only one egg in…
tfk | December 8, 2008The Philadelphia Inquirer profiles EPA head Stephen Johnson:
Johnson majored in biology. At Taylor [University, one of the oldest evangelical universities in the country], that includes discussion of creationism.
Taylor biology professor Timothy Burkholder, who was Johnson's adviser, said, "We would adhere to the view that God is the creator of all things and in charge of our lives, and I think Steve recognizes that and did from the beginning."
Asked about this, Johnson declined to express his views on the evolution-creation question.
"It's not a clean-cut division," the career EPA…
tetrapodzoology | December 8, 2008Another article from the archives, written back on April 19th 2006. Two days earlier I'd sat up watching BBC4's night of primate documentaries, and that where our story begins...
I've sat up and watched such things as 'Natural History Night' and 'Dr Who Night' before - usually they're a con, the programmes fizzling out round about 10-30, but 'Primates Night' (err, if that's what it was called) wasn't so thrifty, keeping me in front of the TV until past 01-00 at least. And it was brilliant - the best assortment of TV programmes I've seen since, well, ever.
The first episode of the BBC series…
illconsidered | December 8, 2008 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) December 7, 2008 Top Stories:Poznan, Recession, UN Atlas, Methane, Nahcolite, IEA WEO. THC, ICE, Melting Arctic, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures, Feedbacks, Paleoclimate, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Satellites, DSCOVR Impacts, Forests, Climate Refugees, Wacky Weather, Floods & Droughts, Venice Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings,…
sb admin | December 2, 2008Itâs nice to finally be able to report that the Bush administration EPA has issued what appears to be a strong pollution-curbing rule on medical waste incineration. Although medical waste incinerators account for a relatively small amount of overall air pollution, they can have significant effects in the 57 communities where theyâre currently located.
EPA estimates that if incinerators meet the new requirements, theyâll reduce mercury emissions by 637-682 pounds each year, and lead emissions by 361-420 pounds annually â good news the neurological functioning of children growing up near these…