Environment
sporte | November 16, 2008Last spring, in a coffee shop in Berkeley, I saw an amazing thing. It was a cup made from corn. The information on the cup says that it is made from corn, is environmentally sustainable, and 100% compostable.
My fellow ScienceBloggers have written several articles lately about corn in fast food (here, here, and here), but I'm not sure they realized that corn is used for more than fast food. Corn is also used to make the packaging.
The company that made this cup is called Fabri-Kal. The cup is one of many compostable packaging items from Fabri-Kal's Greenware line. Interestingly,…
aardvarchaeology | November 15, 2008Here's a grim thought about the environment.
There is no way of life for humans on Earth that is ecologically sustainable for a global population of more than a billion. Our per capita environmental footprint doesn't really matter at this stage.
If we retain our current population and return to a Palaeolithic lifestyle, we're still fucked in the not-too-long run. If we quit having so many children and get back down to a global population in the hundreds of millions, it won't matter any more how each of us splurges and consumes.
You don't need to recycle milk cartons. What you really need to…
clock | November 14, 2008There are 11 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, 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:
Global Taxonomic Diversity of Anomodonts (Tetrapoda, Therapsida) and the Terrestrial Rock Record Across the Permian-Triassic Boundary:
The end-Permian biotic crisis (~252.5 Ma) represents the most severe extinction…
sb admin | November 14, 2008This week Senator Max Baucus, chair of the powerful Finance Committee, released a policy paper on healthcare reform. Ezra Klein notes that itâs not a reform proposal, but âthe beginning of Max Baucus's attempt to create a health care reform processâ â and he explains the plan and the politics surrounding it in two separate posts. Maggie Mahar at Health Beat delves into the costs of Baucusâs ideas and considers how different stakeholders will react to them.
Meanwhile, people are struggling under our current system (or lack thereof). Adam Hughes at Reg Watch alerts us to a new regulation likely…
clock | November 14, 2008We are in the final strecth! The submissions have been trickling in all year, and a little bit more frequently recently, and many more over the past couple of weeks, so, if you have not done it yet, it is high time now to dig through your Archives for your best posts since December 20th 2007 and submit them. Submit one, or two, or several - no problem. Or ask your readers to submit for you.
Only submissions received through this form are valid.
Then take a look at your favourite bloggers and pick some of their best posts - don't worry, we can deal with duplicate entries. Do not forget new…
grrlscientist | November 12, 2008tags: seafood, fisheries, aquaculture, fish farming, tuna, swordfish, salmon, shrimp, sushi, book review
There's plenty of fish in the sea, as the old addage goes -- but are there, really? I experienced a rude awakening at the peak popularity of Orange Roughy, which I loved. I learned that Orange Roughy, Hoplostethus atlanticus, an extremely long-lived benthic species in the Western Pacific Ocean that doesn't even reach sexual maturity until 40 years of age, was being eaten out of existence by people like me. After I learned that, I never touched Orange Roughy again. But after I discovered…
stoat | November 10, 2008Really, why are you reading this? Read something of substance instead.
Last time I said I ought to read Oresekes again carefully. I have.Summary: nothing has changed. She is still wrong. Note: in all the following, I abbreviate the authors of Chicken Itza as "Oreskes". Well, she is the lead author and the only famous one, so gets to take the rap.
Oreskes central thesis is: Nierenberg was the lead author of the first major report on climate science issued by the National Academy of Sciences that challenged the emerging consensus view on global warming. It did so not by focusing on the…
illconsidered | November 10, 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) Top Stories:Obama, Bailout, 2008 World Energy Outlook, Revised Theory [350 ppm] Melting Arctic, Arctic Geopolitics, Climate Refugees, Climate Models, Late Comments Food Crisis, Food Production Hurricanes, Temperatures, Feedbacks, Paleoclimate, ENSO, Glaciers, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Corals, Tornadoes, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings, Sequestration,…
cwilcox | November 8, 2008We've all seen a news story or documentary on Discovery Channel about how global warming is wiping out Polar Bears or how poaching and habitat destruction is killing off the Gorillas. There are a lot of endangered species, and some are particularly trumpeted by the media and scientists alike. But there are 1,642,189 species on the IUCN's Red List - most you've probably never even heard of. I've found ten of them I bet you didn't know about.
What are they? Read the rest of this post!Take the Bumblebee Bat, for example. It wins the "cutest bat ever" contest hands down. Other wise known as…
sb admin | November 7, 2008This weekâs edition is devoted to blogging about election results: the performance of state-level ballot measures, what the new Congress looks like, speculation about cabinet picks, and priorities for President-Elect Obama and the 111th Congress.
Suggested Policies and Priorities
Students from the Presidio School of Management, writing at TriplePundit, offer suggestions for a fiscal stimulus package.
Kate Sheppard at Gristmill considers the prospect for getting the green economy rolling.
Jake Schmidt at NRDCâs Switchboard compiles input from around the world to Obama on global warming.…
tfk | November 6, 2008This summer, I sat in with some big shots to discuss the future of science policy in an Obama Presidency, and of space policy in particular. One of the ideas I pushed, and which received general support, was the importance of a cabinet-level science advisor to the President, one who would be appointed and confirmed quickly, and given maximal access to the President and his decision-making process. Many scientists and science societies agree.
Now that Obama is planning his transition, the question moves to a more practical realm: who should he appoint?
First, I think the science advisor…
illconsidered | November 4, 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) November 2, 2008 Top Stories:Methane, Credit Crunch, Living Planet Report Melting Arctic, Arctic Geopolitics, Antarctica, Magnetic Portals, Late Comments Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Paleoclimate, Glaciers, Sea Levels Impacts, Forests, Corals, Desertification, Wacky Weather, Floods & Droughts Transportation, Sequestration, Geoengineering Journals,…
grrlscientist | November 3, 2008tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
European Bee-eater pair, Merops apiaster.
She's still hungry, but not yet willing to mate. So the male bee-eater takes wing
to find more food. When he returns, "the female nearly always accepts the
offering, quickly eating," reports British ornithologist C. Hilary Fry. If his
courtship is successful, he'll continue to bring her prey through the
egg-laying period. Both parents deliver meals to their chicks.
Image: Jözsef L. Szentpéteri/National Geographic online [larger view].
Birds in Science
Raising young can be…
cortex | October 28, 2008You know what I think about when I hear about the epic failure of all these fancy financial models that were designed to calculate risk? I think about the Atlantic Cod. These fish used to be everywhere. (Once upon a time, they were considered the cash crop of the ocean. Spanish fishing vessels would trek across the Atlantic just to fish the abundant cod off the coast of Canada.) Now the Newfoundland cod fishery is gone, yet another victim of overfishing.
The story of cod is usually told as the tragedy of trawlers. A trawler is boat designed to drag a massive net behind it. These nets are…
cwilcox | October 27, 2008It seems that you can't have a conversation about evolution that doesn't end with everyone involved feeling frustrated. You can't even mention the word 'evolution' without bringing up a political philippic, religious rant or scientific squabble. Unfortunately, this keeps everyone from the conversations that really matter - of course, I'm talking about the fun ones.
No, I don't mean the ones that are fun to paleontologists looking for the origins of limbs or biologists searching for the mechanics of fat accumulation. I mean the ones that are really fun, to just about everyone, save, perhaps, a…
edyong | October 27, 2008Most of the planet's ecosystems are made of a multitude of different species, rich tangles of living things all interacting, competing and cooperating in order to eke out an existence. But not always - in South Africa, within the darkness of a gold mine, there is an ecosystem that consists of a single species, a type of bacteria that is the only thing alive in the hot, oxygen-less depths. It is an ecosystem of one, living in complete isolation from the Sun's energy.
This incredible and unique habitat was discovered by Dylan Chivian from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, leading a…
illconsidered | October 27, 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) October 26, 2008 Top Stories:Bailout, Green Solutions, WWF, EU Airlines & GHGs, 40 Major Cities, Francophonie Melting Arctic, NF3, Speth, Monbiot, Late Comments Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, The Temperature Record, Temperatures, Paleoclimate, Sea Levels, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Wacky Weather, Floods & Droughts Mitigation, Transportation, Sequestration,…
tfk | October 23, 2008I imagine Casey Luskin and Anika Smith sitting in a dark room together. The mirror ball spins as these Disco. titans take the floor for a podcast about the Texas science standards (aka TEKS: Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills). You'll recall that I tripped up some of Disco.'s fancy footwork last Friday, but these two sashay right past the evidence.
At issue is a Disco.-inspired standard in the older TEKS which requires teachers to have students "analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific…
clock | October 23, 2008
Yes, this has been in the works for a long time, and a few hints have been planted here and there over the past months, but now it is official - NASA and The Beagle Project have signed a Space Act Agreement and will work together on a host of projects including scientific research and education. You can read the details on The Beagle Project Blog - space, oceans, biology, science education, history of science, exploration and adventure: all at once. How exciting!
The text of the agreement is under the fold:
NASA and the HMS Beagle Trust have signed a Space Act Agreement for cooperation…
tlambert | October 22, 2008I think the funniest part of Monckton's open letter to John McCain is his description of himself at the beginning:
His contribution to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 - the correction of a table
inserted by IPCC bureaucrats that had overstated tenfold the observed contribution of the
Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to sea-level rise - earned him the status of Nobel Peace
Laureate. His Nobel prize pin, made of gold recovered from a physics experiment, was presented
to him by the Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, New York, USA. He
has lectured at…