Environment
illconsidered | April 28, 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:Methane, Forests Sink to Source, Sulphate Geoengineering Melting Arctic, Seabed Claims, Antarctica, Saving the Earth, Late Comments A Note on the Food Crisis, Food Crisis Hurricanes, GHG Stats, Temperatures, ENSO, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Wacky Weather, Floods & Droughts, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings, Sequestration,…
petnoyer | April 27, 2008This is first in a series of five referenced articles about shared characteristics in deep-sea and shallow-water corals.
Deep-sea corals are benthic suspension feeders in the classes Anthozoa and Hydrozoa. They share the Phylum Cnidaria along with the jellyfish, sea anemones, and the siphonophores. Cnidarians all share one common trait, a stinging cell called the cnidocite, which is the fastest known biological structure (1) and the unparalleled apex of organelle specialization (2).
Cnidocite structures, aka nematocysts, or stinging cells, are housed within the tentacles of the polyps.…
revere | April 26, 2008We frequently observe here that almost everything in public health, from the societal level to the molecular level, is a balancing act. With most benefits comes a risk and with many risks a benefit. Of course there is a problem when the benefits and risks accrue to different parties as when the public runs the risks and the corporation gets the benefits. So that's one problem in making the trade-offs. Another is when the risks and benefits are completely different, essentially non-comparable. We often try to solve this by measuring them on a common scale like total number of lives saved or…
clock | April 25, 2008Since this is another one of the recurring themes on my blog, I decided to republish all of my old posts on the topic together under the fold. Since my move here to the new blog, I have continued to write about this, e.g., in the following posts:
Preserving species diversity - long-term thinking
Hot boiled wine in the middle of the winter is tasty....
Global Warming disrupts the timing of flowers and pollinators
Global Warming Remodelling Ecosystems in Alaska
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Clocks, Migration and the Effects of Global Warming (December 23, 2005)
Circadian…
petnoyer | April 25, 2008Modern ocean prophet Wallace J Nichols presented the first ever Ecodaredevil Award to Duke University graduate student Elliott Hazen this past April 22nd, on Earth Day. Elliott received the award for on-campus activism at Duke Marine Lab, co-founding GreenWave, a student led sustainability movement, and introducing a class "Green by Design" that brought experts from business, and fisheries to speak about sustainability. Elliott does great research, too.
J Nichols is on the left in the picture below, while Elliott Hazen proudly dons his brand new helmet-slash-environmental award.…
greengabbro | April 25, 2008First off: The Earth Day Accretionary Wedge is up, full of environmental musings from the geoblogosphere - check it out! Since it is still Earth Week here at Berkeley, I'll follow up my carnival contribution with an observation from the trenches, where geology and environmentalism intersect in a series of excruciatingly dull technical documents.
Part of my job used to be telling the people of Sun County, California* how their ground water resources would be affected by proposed new developments. Your average housing development poses a couple of different potential risks to ground water…
voltagegate | April 24, 2008Ed has a great review of a recent paper in Nature presenting new research that describes just how extensive the damage done by the mountain pine beetle in British Columbia. The culprit of the outbreak is most likely climate change since sudden drops in temperature common in northern areas like BC have historically been a check on the beetle's population; in recent years, the winters have been less intense and the beetle populations have benefited from the extension.
It immediately reminded me of the extinction-themed AAAS session I attended and blogged about last year, where ecologist Jim…
laelaps | April 24, 2008
In the first two installments of this series I had the chance to interview two of the most famous paleontologists in the field today, but there are many, many other skilled scientists that you may never have heard of. Dr. Jerry Harris, Director of Paleontology at Dixie State College, is an outstanding scientist (and friend) who has studied a variety of fossil vertebrates from Mesozoic bird tracks to enormous sauropods. Even though I botched some of the questions, Dr. Harris took the time to come up with some excellent responses about his work.
[Brian Switek] What fascinates you about…
ejohnson | April 23, 2008Thank god. Earth Day 2008 has come and gone and we can go back to leisure drives in our Suburbans and liberal watering of our front lawns. Time to ditch those canvas grocery bags- who thinks that far ahead?- and return to good old plastic. It's not like we're completely undoing all the good we did yesterday for the Earth- those elms we planted will continue to offset our carbon output all year long!
Okay, we kid. Obviously, awareness of environmental issues in any form is positive, and although we'd like to see people change their habits year-round- rather than a day or two in late April-…
greengabbro | April 22, 2008Happy Earth Day, everyone. Or, if you're on campus here, Happy Earth Week, complete with live bands at noon every day and a really weird papier-mâché tree ball thing oh, apparently that was a pomegranate to commemorate the Armenian genocide. Earth Week means I've got three more days to write about the relationship of geology, as a science and a profession, to environmental politics... which is good, 'cause I'm distracted today by larger-scale theoretical considerations:
In the end, the root of the problem lies with culture. If we can change the culture, then we may win. If we cannot, then…
sb admin | April 22, 2008Angry Toxicologist makes a good point about Earth Day:
What's wrong with Earth Day?
The name, for one. Earth day. Protecting mother earth. Saving the environment. What's wrong with these? They're all about the earth. No humans mentioned. For a day that's supposed to highlight the damage we are doing and to energize some action, it's woefully off the mark. The degredation of the environment is harmful for people, this is what matters. Doubtless, there are those who care about the environment for the environment's sake. You are entitled to your value but let me tell you that the majority of…
sb admin | April 22, 2008by Lindsay Wheeler
Although today's the official Earth Day, I've been reflecting more and more on my own lifestyle and the efficiency with which I live. It started a few months ago, when I was watching the BBC series Planet Earth with my brother, and I found myself almost to the point of tears thinking about what we, as a human race, have done to the planet. I grew up spending summers in the backcountry of Wyoming and I have always considered myself as a person who has loved the outdoors. However, living in Washington, DC, I often find it easy to forget the fragility of the world…
angrytoxicologist | April 22, 2008What's wrong with Earth Day?
The name, for one. Earth day. Protecting mother earth. Saving the environment. What's wrong with these? They're all about the earth. No humans mentioned. For a day that's supposed to highlight the damage we are doing and to energize some action, it's woefully off the mark. The degredation of the environment is harmful for people, this is what matters. Doubtless, there are those who care about the environment for the environment's sake. You are entitled to your value but let me tell you that the majority of humanity does not share your outlook. They majority may,…
sheril | April 22, 2008I can't think of a better way to kick off Earth Day 2008 than brunch with Wallace J. Nichols - third culture oceanographer and Ocean Conservancy senior scientist. Later today, he's giving a keynote address here at Duke, so it's a good opportunity for us to catch up. Readers may remember J.'s research featured here on loggerhead sea turtles last October, and tonight he'll announce the winner of the first annual EcoDaredevil Award during his talk titled: 'Jump the Chasm: Are you an EcoDaredevil?'
EcoDareDevil is a cool concept... Check this out:
Everywhere I go, I meet EcoDaredevils. They…
esiegel | April 22, 2008As you may have noticed from yesterday's unusual post, today is Earth Day! I thought I'd share with you some of my favorite pictures from space of it, including the famous photograph from Apollo 8 known as Earthrise:
This combination shot made from NASA’s Terra satellite and NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite:
The known satellites at least 0.1 meters in size in orbit around Earth (there are ~11,000 of them as of April 2005, and another 100,000 between 1 cm and 10 cm in size):
Looking at the Earth and the docked Space Shuttle from the International Space Station:
And…
revere | April 21, 2008"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive pollute." I know it doesn't rhyme. But the tangled web is real:
Songbirds feeding near the contaminated South River are showing high levels of mercury, even though they aren't eating food from the river itself, according to a paper published by William and Mary researchers in the journal Science.
Lead author Dan Cristol said his paper has wide-ranging international environmental implications. Mercury is one of the world's most troublesome pollutants, especially in water. The South River, a major tributary of Virginia's…
grrlscientist | April 21, 2008tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
American White Pelican, Pelecanus erythrorhynchos.
Image: Jerry Kram. [larger size].
People Hurting Birds
Jerrould Smith, a dumbass good ol' boy from Sarasota Florida, is charged with animal cruelty after deputies say he deliberately swerved off the road to run over a protected bird species. Smith admitted he hit a sandhill crane and told deputies it was a "spur of the moment" decision and knew the bird was a protected species. The bird died.
New research debunks the common belief that cats and raccoons are to blame…
illconsidered | April 21, 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:Food Crisis, Do Nothing Speech, Paris Greenland, Ward Hunt, Antarctic Salinity, Stern, EGU, Jet Streams, Vulcan Hurricanes, Emanuel, GHGs, Temperatures, Carbon Cycle, Feedbacks, Sea Levels, Satellites, DSCOVR Impacts, Plankton, Forests, Corals, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Transportation, Buildings, Sequestration Journals, Misc. Science, Hansen Kyoto,…
nisbetmc | April 21, 2008
As I have argued in talks and articles over the past year, the communication challenge on global warming is to create the public opinion environment where meaningful policy action can take place. This means shaping public perceptions so that global warming is considered a top tier political priority.
Until Congressional members start to see the issue showing up in polls as a perceived priority and until they start to hear more of a diverse public voice on the matter, Congress will have little incentive to make the tough political choices and trade-offs that are needed.
The communication…
nisbetmc | April 21, 2008Back in February, I traveled to Rome, Italy to present at a conference sponsored by Columbia University's Earth Institute and the Adriano Olivetti Foundation. The focus was on climate change and cities. For the proceedings on that conference, I was asked to contribute a short overview on the communication challenge surrounding climate change and the connection to urban areas and populations. Below I have pasted a first draft of that contribution, as I conclude:
Solving the public opinion challenge means defining the complexities of climate change in a way that connects to the specific core…