Environment
oracknows | May 23, 2008I like my Folder of Woo.
Besides providing me endless fodder for this little weekly feature, my Folder of Woo also provides me nearly endless amusement. Sometimes, I'll just peruse it, looking at woo old and new, woo that's been featured in this little weekly exercise in diving into the belly of the beast, woo that has yet to be featured, and woo that will probably never be featured. Unless people suddenly discovery rationality and science, my Folder of Woo is likely to continue to exist. I suppose that could happen, but it's pretty unlikely, which means my Folder of Woo is likely to continue…
grrlscientist | May 21, 2008tags: pets, insects, beetles, coleoptera, hercules beetle, neptune beetle
Male Hercules beetle, Dynastes hercules hercules,
from South America. This is a popular pet throughout Asia, especially in Japan.
Orphaned image.
What constitutes a pet? Different people keep pets for different reasons, although I'll guess that companionship is likely the top reason for keeping pets. While I do enjoy the companionship of my pets, I enjoy keeping interesting animals as pets, and that means that, in addition to the large variety of mammals, birds, fishes and the few reptiles, amphibians and…
jjacquet | May 21, 2008This month, WIRED magazine offers 10 green heresies, such as the suggestion to buy conventionally grown foods over organic ones and to embrace nuclear power, to save the planet. I certainly support their efforts to bring attention to some fallacies of the green-marketing movement (the authors suggest, for instance, buying used cars over hybrid vehicles) but I also realize, once again, that one needs a Ph.D. in ethical consumption to be a proper environmentalist these days. Furthermore, many of their suggestions focus superficially on energy/carbon issue while ignoring other issues, such as…
illconsidered | May 20, 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:Nargis, Melting Arctic, Polar Bear, Rosenzweig, Nitrogen Cycle, EPICA, McKibben, Late Comments Food Crisis, Task Force, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Satellites, DSCOVR Impacts, Forests, Tornadoes, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts Mitigation, Transportation, Sequestration, Geoengineering Journals, Misc. Science, Pielke Kyoto, Kyoto-…
bcohen | May 20, 2008Now that summer draws near, I have ambitions to read the works listed below the fold. True, I put them here so I can keep track of them. Because I get confused and lose things a lot. But I also put them here to offer a mini bibliography on the themes (some related, some not) of Food, Environmental, and Science Studies.
Summer's Plan
(from Kimberly Applegate)
Breathing Space: How Allergies Shape Our Lives and Landscapes, by Gregg Mitman (2007). This book sits at the intersection of environmental history and the history of science and medicine.
Fruits and Plains: The Horticultural…
gregladen | May 18, 2008 Impacts from warming are evident in satellite images showing that lakes in Siberia disappearing as the permafrost thaws and lake water drains deeper into the ground. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory A new study led by NASA links anthropogenic climate change to a wide range of effects. The study involved scientists from about a dozen institutions and agencies, and looked at biological impacts arising from global temperature increase since the 1970s. The article is published in Nature. According to lead author Cynthia Rosenweig, "This is the first study to link global temperature data sets…
hrynyshyn | May 13, 2008John McCain's plan to decelerate climate change brings to mind the problem posed by fast food restaurant fare. It's attractive and convenient, but ultimately bad for you.
Burgers, fries, onion rings and milkshakes are popular because don't have to wait long to satisfy your hunger, they taste darn good and they don't cost a fortune. You can't live on them for long, though. Just ask Morgan "Super Size Me" Spurlock. Indeed, fast food is at the heart of one of the modern society's most pressing health challenges: rising obesity rates. And you can't make a McDonald's menu healthy just by adding a…
grrlscientist | May 12, 2008tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Common Pochard, Aythya ferina (Hiroshima, Japan).
Image: Bardiac [larger].
Birds in Science News
Climate change threatens many animals -- but with any luck, some will handle weather shifts with as much aplomb as Parus major, a colorful songbird also known as the great tit. In a study published today in Science, ornithologists from the University of Oxford tracked the egg-laying times of great tits in Wytham, England. Since the mid-1970s, temperatures in Wytham have risen steadily, hastening the start of spring by two…
drorzel | May 12, 2008Matt Nisbet points to a new Pew Survey about global warming showing very little change in public opinion on the subject in recent years. It seems that An Inconvenient Truth didn't really cause a radical change in public opinion, after all.
(Of course, it does appear to have brought climate change to the attention of media elites, which is probably more important than general public opinion, in the end...)
The really interesting thing about this, as usual, is a tidbit near the end of the summary (and shown in the graphic Matt posted:
Among Republicans, similar percentages of college graduates…
illconsidered | May 12, 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:Nargis, Melting Arctic, Antarctica, Late Comments Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures, Feedbacks, Paleoclimate, Sea Levels, THC, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Tropical Rainforests, Floods & Droughts Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings, Sequestration Journals, Misc. Science, Schwartz, Pielke, Connolley Kyoto-2, Carbon Trade, Optimal…
clock | May 10, 2008We 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.…
sb admin | May 9, 2008Bloggers are keeping us up to date on some of the many proposals for spending federal dollars on health and environmental issues:
Tom Philpott at Gristmill brings us the latest on the farm bill, which has been delayed due to disputes over subsidy reform.
Hank Green at EnviroWonk explains why and how the Department of Energy will be spending $60 million over the next five years on solar thermal technology.
Elizabeth Cooney at White Coat Notes conveys advice from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute President Dr. Edward Benz on improving cancer research; increasing NIH funding levels is a crucial step…
nisbetmc | May 9, 2008
Pew has released an in depth analysis of news coverage of the Pope's U.S. visit. As I have posted previously, some media critics have claimed that the press gave the Pontiff a pass on hard-hitting questions while polls show that the Pope's visit was a major public relations success.
As the Pew news analysis finds, the Pope's visit dominated headlines, accounting for 16% of the total news hole for the week, eclipsing for example the 5% of coverage devoted to the war in Iraq and second in attention only to the 31% of coverage devoted to the election. According to Pew, the saturation coverage…
bcohen | May 9, 2008Here's a site with a slew of podcasts about science, Earth & Sky: A Clear Voice for Science. I found it because a colleague in my department, Rosalyn Berne, was being interviewed about her book on Nanotechnology and Ethics. But there are tons more, including Michael Pollan, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus (authors of the provocative "The Death of Environmentalism"), James Hansen on climate change, and on and on.
Oh, and if you want to track down more about nanotechnology and ethics and the whole gamut, here is The Power of Small, a forum discussion by some who tell us nano will…
nisbetmc | May 7, 2008Bill McKibben's latest grassroots project is the launch of www.350.org, a Web portal and blog designed to focus world attention on cutting the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million.
From the Web site:
Dear friends,
350 is the red line for human beings, the most important number on the planet. The most recent science tells us that unless we can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, we will cause huge and irreversible damage to the earth.
We're planning an international campaign to unite the world around the number 350, and we need…
grrlscientist | May 5, 2008tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Male mountain bluebird, Sialia currucoides.
This bird surprised birders in Washington state by visiting Bainbridge Island this past April.
Image: Eva Gerdts, April 2008 [larger view].
Birds in Science
A team of scientists believe they can provide the key to an enduring wildlife mystery: how do birds navigate? Two main theories joust to explain the seemingly miraculous avian compass. One, supported by research among homing pigeons four years ago, is that birds have tiny particles, called magnetite, in their upper…
illconsidered | May 5, 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:Keenlyside, Dead Zones Melting Arctic, Antarctica, Stern, CH4 Rising, Late Comments Global Food Crisis Hurricanes, Nargis, GHGs, Temperatures, Carbon Cycle, Feedbacks, Paleoclimate, Glaciers, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Tropical Rainforests, Corals, Wacky Weather Wildfires, Floods & Droughts, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings, Sequestration,…
sb admin | May 2, 2008Companies have evidently realized that marketing anti-bacterial products to U.S. consumers is a good way to make money, and are pushing a wide array of products that claim to have bacteria-fighting properties. (I've seen socks, computer products, toys ... and even a handy hook you can use to avoid touching a potentially germ-ridden door handle.) This might seem like a good thing - bacteria cause some pretty nasty diseases, after all - except that they're using nano-sized silver particles to fight the bacteria, and we don't know nearly enough about the effects of all the nano-sized particles…
oracknows | May 1, 2008Yet another dubious study has been making the rounds of mercury militia websites and discussion forums. The study is being played up and touted by certain very excitable and scientifically not-too-bright militia members and woo-meisters like Mike Adams as some sort of vindication of the scientifically discredited hypothesis that mercury in vaccines somehow causes autism.
It doesn't.
It is, however, somewhat interesting in that their embrace of this bit of questionable research shows how desperate the mercury militia is to grasp to any bit of peer-reviewed published research that they can spin…
petnoyer | April 30, 2008This is the third in a series of five referenced articles on the shared characteristics of deep and shallow water corals.
by Michael J. Risk
Image of the Devonian seafloor from "Evolution of Life"
The coelenterates, corals and their relatives, are very ancient, and in fact may be the oldest metazoans. Proterozoic burrows preserved in the Mackenzie Mountains of Northwest Canada were probably made by animals resembling cerianthid anemones, and are about one billion years old. Silurian gorgonians are almost identical to their modern counterparts. The group as a whole has therefore had a very…