Environment
illconsidered | December 3, 2007 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, Bali Anticipation, Bali Communique McKinsey & Co., UNDP Human Development Report, Scenarios, Oxfam, SPM Hurricanes, GHG Stats, Temperatures, la Nina, Glaciers, WAIS, Satellites, LIMA Impacts, Forests, Corals, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts, Food vs. Biofuel Mitigation, Transportation, Housing, Sequestration, Geoengineering, Adaptation Journals, Misc. Science, POGO, Hansen, Eric Steig…
clock | November 30, 2007
[Bumped up for visibility - and it makes it easier for me to keep updating with new entries] Now that the Science Blogging Conference is getting very close, it is time to remind you that the new edition of the Science Blogging Anthology, "Open Laboratory 2007", is in the works and is (still) accepting your suggestions.
Although the entire process, from the initial idea all the way to having a real book printed and up for sale, took only about a month, the Open Laboratory 2006 was a great success. This year, we have had much more time so we hope we will do an even better job of it.
More…
hrynyshyn | November 30, 2007"It" is the great geoengineering debate. And the stakes have never been higher.
The basics are ably described by Chris Mooney and his blog partner Sheril Kirshenbaum has already supplied a less-than-appreciative response. Even though there are still a good number of misinformed folks out there who can't accept the reality of climate change, some sectors of the scientific community have already given up on the hope of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and moved on to thinking about ways to counteract the resulting warming.
What we're talking about is fiddling with the atmospheric and oceanic…
jjacquet | November 29, 2007That's the question posed by an article in today's New York Times. The answer? Probably NO, but the article explores the role of high end marketing in the environmental crisis and is worth a visit--if only just for the photos. In shishi corners of our society, rich designers are doing their part to make a better world (at least until the next fashion comes along).
Like recycled wreaths and other earth-friendly Christmas decor. "Rudolph the Recycled Reindeer" is the brainchild of Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys New York. He used empty soda cans like mosaics in his Christmas…
hrynyshyn | November 28, 2007Coal is turning out to be one of those political litmus-test issues for those worried about climate change. And as usual, the country is polarized. The Iowa Utilities Board is the on the side of angels. Holding the fort with Satan are Arkansas and Indiana, among others. It splits on predictable party lines when it comes to presidential politics, too. But leading the fight against coal isn't a White House hopeful. It's someone who's supposed to stay out of politics. None other than NASA climate guru James Hansen.
First, some context. Iowa recently rejected an application to build a coal-fired…
clock | November 27, 2007Bear Hunting Altered Genetics More Than Ice Age Isolation:
It was not the isolation of the Ice Age that determined the genetic distribution of bears, as has long been thought. This is shown by an international research team led from Uppsala University in Sweden in the latest issue of Molecular Ecology. One possible interpretation is that the hunting of bears by humans and human land use have been crucial factors.
Mediterranean Sea: Most Dangerous Place On Earth For Sharks And Rays:
The first complete IUCN Red List assessment of the status of all Mediterranean sharks and rays has revealed that…
mikethemadbiologist | November 26, 2007I've written about creationist and convicted felon Kent Hovind's idiocy. But I had forgotten another aspect of Hovind--his ties to white supremacist groups. From the archives:
By way of Orcinus, comes a whole lot of information about creationist Kent Hovind. First, a description of his ally, Michael Marcavage, who invited Hovind to speak in Dover, PA during the trial:
Michael Marcavage, whose Philadelphia-based organization Repent America is sponsoring Hovind's visit, said the accusations of anti-Semitism and extremism are unfair.
"He believes that people are from one race, the human…
illconsidered | November 26, 2007 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, Australian Election, Canada at the Commonwealth Conference, Bali, East Asian Summit, OPEC Melting Arctic, SPM, GHG Record, Oxfam, Milankovitch Hurricanes, Mitag, Sidr, ENSO, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Satellites, DSCOVR Impacts, Forests, Corals, Desertification, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts, Food Production Mitigation, Transportation, Building, Geoengineering Journals, Misc. Science, Free…
drorzel | November 25, 2007A couple of months ago, I embarked on an experiment to read some SF magazines, and see if I was really missing out on the wonderful stuff that people are always haranguing con-goers about. I bought paper copies of Analog's November issue and the October/ November Asimov's, and commented on them here. I was unable to find paper copies of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, apparently due to their obnoxious return policy, but Kate got me an electronic version of the October issue, which I read slowly on my Palm over the next month or so. I finished it a while back, but never got around…
sb admin | November 23, 2007Bloggers have been looking at the numbers related to our health. WSJâs The Numbers Guy sheds light on the calculations behind global HIV-infection figures, which the U.N.âs AIDS agency has revised sharply downwards, and Mead Over at Global Health Policy hopes that the revision will re-focus attention on the need for cost-effectiveness estimates in the global response to AIDS. Shirley S. Wang at the WSJ Health Blog busts the myth that suicide rates rise during the winter holidays, while Merrill Goozner at GoozNews explains a mysterious Congressional Budget Office claim that health care co-pays…
retrospectacle | November 21, 2007A Japanese whaling fleet recently set sail amidst much local fanfare, but Greenpeace is yet again determined to interfere with the hunt by placing themselves in between the whales and the Japanese harpoons. Unlike some other whaling protest groups, Greenpeace relies strictly on peaceful non-violent protesting despite the Japanese government labeling them "dangerous animal rights terrorists."
A dangerous terrorist act by Greenpeace.
Furthermore, the Japanese government states that the hunt is allowable, despite a long-standing moratorium against whaling by the International Whaling…
revere | November 19, 2007Air pollution exists in two physical forms: as a gas (molecules) and as particles (usually heterogeneous agglomerations of huge numbers of molecules stuck together). Particles in the air are also called aerosols. Depending upon their size (really their aerodynamic behavior), their abundance and their composition, they can affect our lungs, vegetation or visibility. They can come from anywhere. Sometimes they are formed "in place" by secondary chemical reactions of precursor pollutants. Photochemical oxidant pollution ("smog") is of this type. Sometimes it is of natural origin and can be…
illconsidered | November 19, 2007Hydrogen powered cars have such an immediate and naive appeal. I mean just imagine nothing but water vapour coming out of your exhaust pipe! What could possibly be wrong with that?
Well as with most deus ex machina solutions to our oil dependence, this one has some rather glaring and inconvenient difficulties, in a very similar way to biofuels.
Specifically, the problem with hydrogen powered vehicles is not with the burning of the fuel, but its production. Because there is no earthly source of ready to go hydrogen, this product is actually better thought of as energy storage, rather than…
illconsidered | November 19, 2007 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: SPM, US Reaction, Ban's Tour, OPEC Arctic Circulation, CARMA, State Of The Carbon Cycle, BBC on Denial, Global Dimming, ARGO Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Ozone, Satellites Impacts, Rainforests, Corals, Wacky Weather, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts, Food vs. Biofuel Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings, Sequestration, Geoengineering, Adaptation Journals, Misc. Science Bali Summit,…
gregladen | November 15, 2007This is the first in a series of reposts from gregladen.com on global warming.
The IPCC report is out, "An Inconvenient Truth" has been honored by the academy, a sea change is happening in the way that climate change news is being reported, and you can bet the Right Wing and the Ree-pubs are as we speak working up new Talking Points and Spins to deflate the urgency of the issue. It is an axiom that in reporting science, there are two (not one, not three or four, just two) sides to every issue, and one side is the plank nailed to the Democratic Party Platform, and the other side is the…
illconsidered | November 14, 2007 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
(N.B. Sorry it is late, this is my fault, not Harvey's...)
(skip to bottom) Top Stories, Energy vs War Priorities, IEA Report, Expensive Energy, Bali, Ban Ki-moon Tour Arctic Ice, Tabasco Floods, Polls, GreenList, Ethics, Mayors, Forest Fires Hurricanes, GHG Stats, Temperatures, ENSO, Glaciers, Satellites Impacts, Rainforests, Desertification, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts, Food vs. Biofuel Mitigation,…
clock | November 14, 2007How Poisonous Mushrooms Cook Up Toxins:
Alpha-amanitin is the poison of the death cap mushroom, Amanita phalloides. The Michigan State University plant biology research associate was looking for a big gene that makes a big enzyme that produces alpha-amanitin, since that's how other fungi produce similar compounds. But after years of defeat, she and her team called in the big guns -- new technology that sequences DNA about as fast as a death cap mushroom can kill. The results: The discovery of remarkably small genes that produce the toxin -- a unique pathway previously unknown in fungi.
Brain…
laelaps | November 12, 2007There are some blog posts that I have in mind for a long time before they make it to Laelaps, others that are written in a more spur-of-the-moment fashion, usually about one topic or another that has left me aggravated and incised with no recourse except unloading my thoughts on the internet. Imagine the position I was in then, just having finished Armand Marie Leroi's book Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body, being halfway through Stephen Jay Gould's Mismeasure of Man (having just rebuffed some genetic determinist nonsense myself), and fresh from a viewing of Logan's Run when I…
grrlscientist | November 12, 2007tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Song sparrow, Melospiza melodia.
Image: Dave Rintoul, KSU. [larger size].
Birds in Science
Dinosaurs like Velociraptors had one of the most efficient respiratory systems of all animals, similar to that of modern diving birds like penguins, fossil evidence shows. The bipedal meat-eaters, the therapods, had air sacs ventilated by tiny bones that moved the ribcage up and down. "Finding these structures in modern birds and their extinct dinosaur ancestors suggests that these running dinosaurs had an efficient respiratory…
gregladen | November 8, 2007When discussing global warming (and more broadly, climate change), especially here in the Great White North, it is often quipped that a little global warming is not necessarily a bad thing. So what if cold regions get warmer? That would be good for growing more food, having a warmer winter, and so on. Also, when we note the very large "natural" climate changes and contrast this with what is happening now, some people conclude that human-induced global warming is small change and therefore unimportant.
There are two reasons why this is wrong.
The first reason, which we can discuss another…