Environment
cortex | July 14, 2008I loved WALL-E. In my opinion, it's the best Pixar movie yet, and I was a huge fan of Ratatouille. While the movie has an obvious environmental subtext - we are destroying the earth with our love of disposable things - I was most taken with its subtle endorsement of Darwin. And no, I'm not talking about evolution or natural selection. As I watched WALL-E , I couldn't help but think about Darwin's last major work, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals.
The Origin gets all the attention, but The Expression is Darwin at his most inventive and audacious. The title only hints at its…
illconsidered | July 14, 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) July 13, 2008 Top Stories:G8, World's Biggest Polluter, Melting Arctic, Wilkins Ice Shelf, Smog & Aerosols Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Feedbacks, Paleoclimate, Glaciers, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Corals, Wacky Weather, Tornadoes, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts Mitigation, Transportation, Sequestration, Geoengineering, Adaptation Journals,…
hrynyshyn | July 11, 2008If you had to identify the most popularly cited threats posed by a changing climate, rising sea levels would be a strong contender. While no one would argue that the fate of hundreds of millions of humans who live in low-lying coastal regions is not a good enough reason to put the brakes on global warming, I'd like to see more attention paid to what's happening beneath the ocean surface at its current level. I'm talking about the possibility of mass coral extinction. It's the subject of a new analysis in Science by an impressive list of 39 scientists from an even more impressive list of…
gregladen | July 10, 2008 Sizzle
Randy Olson is a Harvard ('84) trained marine biologist with field experience on the Great Barrier Reef, in the Antarctic, the US Virgin Islands, and elsewhere. He even spent a little time with Jacques Cousteau.
But an extensive career in marine biology was not to be.
Randy started to change careers around 1990, with the production of a number of short films including "Barnacles Tell No LIes" (which I've placed at the bottom of this post for your enjoyment). In 1994 he literally jumped ship. walking away from a tenured professorship in New Hampshire, and went to USC to study…
cortex | July 10, 2008Is it just me or are the mosquitoes extra bad this year? I have a feeling that people would care even more about climate change if, instead of talking about rising sea levels, environmentalists started talking about swarms of mosquitoes. A warmer earth will be an itchier place.
On a related note, a small experimental study conducted last night on a patio table confirmed my hypothesis: citronella candles actually attract the insects. The allure of the flickering light seems to far outweigh the benefits of the chemical repellent.
josh donlan | July 8, 2008As presidential politics ramp up and the environment becomes part of the rhetoric, it reminded me of a essay I wrote a couple of years ago as part of book project entitled Thirty-five Years Since Earth Day: Visions of a New Generation. The editor ended up dropping the ball on the book, but my essay is still lingering. So I thought I would share it here. My essay addresses the state of biodiversity and reads much like a open letter to the president and voters.
Perhaps some of you will enjoy some or all of it here: History, our gardens, and the future of biodiversity: Why we should care and…
illconsidered | July 7, 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) July 6, 2008 Top Stories: G8, Garnaut, WB Biofuel Report, Melting Arctic, WAIS, Plan B.V3, Penguins Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel Hurricanes, Myanmar, GHGs, Temperatures, Paleoclimate Impacts, Forests, Wacky Weather, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts Mitigation, Sequestration, Geoengineering, Adaptation Journals, Misc. Science, Hansen UN Messaging, Optimal Carbon Reduction Strategy Politics:…
kevin z | July 6, 2008
"The United States faces unprecedented environmental and economic challenges in the decades ahead.
Foremost among them will be climate change, sea-level rise, altered weather patterns, declines in freshwater availability and quality and loss of biodiversity."
So says a group composed of the heads of both NOAA and USGS in a recent issue of Science. NOAA, covering the atmospheric and oceanic realms, has a budget of approximately 4 billion employing 12000 employees, while USGS, in charge of the earthen and freshwater realms, is sitting at 1 billion with 8500 employees. Though NASA oversees…
gregladen | July 6, 2008 OA pillars The following are excerpts from the journal Nature regarding the Public Library of Science. These were located with a simple search for the phrase "Public Library of Science." For each item, I provide the source, and a selected bit of text. I have no selection criteria to report, but I do have a reason for doing this: To give an interesting view of the history of PLoS as a concept and an entity, and to some extent, the reactions to PLoS from various quarters.
I ignored passing reference to PLoS or redundant items.
Personally, I find this textual sequence fascinating. I…
illconsidered | June 30, 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 June 29, 2008 Top Stories: Melting Arctic, Antarctica, Resource Conflict, Rapid Climate Change, Ozone/Methane, Stern Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, Myanmar, GHGs, Temperatures, ENSO, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Wacky Weather, Tornadoes, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts Mitigation, Transportation, Sequestration, Geoengineering, Adaptation Journals, Misc…
sb admin | June 27, 2008Bloggers help us stay on top of environmental news:
Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth brings us the grim news from a new federal report on climate change impacts: thereâs a 90-percent likelihood that the frequency and intensity of heat waves and heavy downpours will rise.
Andrew Schneider at Secret Ingredients reports that the Supreme Court has rejected appeals by asbestos giant W.R. Grace, clearing the way for company officials to stand trial for knowingly endangering the lives of its workers and residents of Libby, Montana.
Kate Sheppard at Gristmill keeps tabs on a flurry of fuel-related…
bcohen | June 27, 2008Resolved: a host of academic, journalistic, and community-based work has increased its focus in recent years on the matter of local food. In no way could I summarize the breadth of that work. But I am frequently surprised to find the same conversations going on, over and over again. For example, just this week there was yet another article asking if fewer food miles are really better. I was astounded that the author wrote the story--in which he assumed that carbon emissions were the measure of a food system's environmental value--and that the Salon editors gave it the go-ahead, because it…
grrlscientist | June 26, 2008tags: The Last Flight of The Scarlet Macaw, conservation, endangered species, parrots, politics, Bruce Barcott, book review
Nonfiction books are often thought of as being "good for us", as if they were literary vitamin tablets, but many people take their summers off from their vitamins by reading trashy novels or mysteries while ensconced under an umbrella on a sandy beach. So what would you say if you could read a book that has the best qualities of both genres? If you think that such a book doesn't exist, well, think again: Bruce Barcott's recently published book, The Last Flight of The…
cmooney | June 25, 2008You can read it here. It starts like this:
It was one of the largest public demonstrations in US history. On June 12, 1982, an estimated 750,000 protesters thronged Central Park in New York City, chanting "No nukes!" and bearing signs reading "Reagan is a bomb -- both should be banned" and "Arms are for embracing." Some demonstrators called for unilateral US disarmament, others for renewing arms control talks with the Soviet Union. It was a diverse coalition that had been pulled together by Ken Caldeira, a 25-year-old activist and computer geek. Back then he was paying the rent doing…
clock | June 23, 2008It's Monday night - time for new articles in PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine:
On the Emergence and Awareness of Auditory Objects:
Anyone who has walked into a crowded reverberant nightclub, with a hubbub of multiple conversations amidst blaring music, will recall the initial impression of the sound as loud and undifferentiated noise. In short order, however, different sound streams begin to emerge as one attends to individual speakers, listens to the melody from the band, or even hears one instrument in it. Humans perform this remarkable feat effortlessly. Our extraordinary abilities to…
illconsidered | June 23, 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 June 22, 2008 A Brief Note Top Stories:Domingues et al., Greenland Ice Cores, Melting Arctic Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHG Stats, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Wacky Weather, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings, Sequestration, Geoengineering, Adaptation Journals, Misc. Science, Hansen, Pielke Kyoto-2, Carbon Trade, Carbon Tax, Optimal…
hrynyshyn | June 17, 2008The man that Republicans believe is the best candidate for president their party has to offer says that lifting the federal moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling would "be very helpful in the short term resolving our energy crisis." This may not be the least intelligent statement to be made in the 2008 campaign to date ;;;; Ed Brayton prefers McCain's demonstration of his lack of understanding of basic legal principles ;;;; but it still boggles the mind.
No one even tangentially familiar with the petroleum industry would dare suggest that the time-frame involved in exploring, reviewing…
illconsidered | June 16, 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 June 15, 2008 Top Stories:UNFCCC in Bonn, Melting Arctic, Antarctica, Permafrost, Solar Cycle, Late Comments Food Crisis, Rome Summit, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, Myanmar, GHGs, Temperatures, Paleoclimate, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Corals, Wacky Weather, Tornadoes, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts, US Midwest, China Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings,…
clock | June 13, 2008Mysterious Mountain Dinosaur May Be New Species:
A partial dinosaur skeleton unearthed in 1971 from a remote British Columbia site is the first ever found in Canadian mountains and may represent a new species, according to a recent examination by a University of Alberta researcher.
Memory Loss Linked To Common Sleep Disorder:
For the first time, UCLA researchers have discovered that people with sleep apnea show tissue loss in brain regions that help store memory. Reported in the June 27 edition of the journal Neuroscience Letters, the findings emphasize the importance of early detection of…
hrynyshyn | June 13, 2008Among the most common arguments to emerge from attendees of the climate-change slide show we members of Al Gore's Climate Project hear is "what about nuclear energy?" After all, it doesn't produce any greenhouse gas emissions, at least not while operating, and the technology is already available. Well, there are three reasons why nuclear energy isn't part of a realistic solution to climate change.
One is the time it takes to get a nuke running. First you have to conduct an environmental review of the project and site. Then you apply for federal and local permits. Then you sit through long…