Environment
hrynyshyn | November 8, 2007So Hillary has finally joined the bandwagon and called for an 80 percent cut, from 1990 levels, in fossil-fuel emissions by 2050, joining Edwards and Obama, Bill McKibben and most of the environmental movement. William "Stoat" McConnelly is skeptical. As well we should be. I am, of course, highly skeptical as well. But is that response sufficient and appropriate?
There are lots of reasons to treat such a goal as wildly unrealistic. According to the latest report from the International Energy Association, "if governments around the world stick with current policies ... the world's energy needs…
clock | November 6, 2007As always on Tuesdays late in the evening, there is a bunch of new papers published in PLoS ONE and here are my personal favourites of the week:
Oxytocin Increases Generosity in Humans:
Human beings routinely help strangers at costs to themselves. Sometimes the help offered is generous--offering more than the other expects. The proximate mechanisms supporting generosity are not well-understood, but several lines of research suggest a role for empathy. In this study, participants were infused with 40 IU oxytocin (OT) or placebo and engaged in a blinded, one-shot decision on how to split a sum…
illconsidered | November 5, 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, Mexican Floods, Mayors Meeting, Carbon Cycle Melting Arctic, ICAP, Ocean Sink, California Wildfires Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Glaciers, Sea Levels, ENSO, Satellites Impacts, Rainforests, Corals, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts, Food vs. Biofuel Mitigation, Transportation, Building, Sequestration, Geoengineering Journals, Misc. Science Kyoto-2, Carbon Trade, Carbon Tax, Optimal…
cmcclain | October 29, 2007In the words of Rick at MBSL&S
So let's just say you have a couple hundred thousand metric tons of iron filings laying around the house. While in the tub one day, you conceive of a terrific idea of dumping all that iron into the ocean, thus seeding phytoplankton growth (iron is a limiting nutrient for phytoplankton) and sequestering atmospheric carbon for centuries deep underwater. Voila! Hello carbon sink... goodbye global warming. And even better, you can sell shares of your iron filing dumping as carbon offsets to individuals and business who are looking to feel more carbon neutral. It…
illconsidered | October 28, 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 GW news roundup
(skip to bottom) Top Stories, Accelerating CO2 Growth, GEO-4, Mass Extinctions, Roe & Baker, Prins & Rayner, IAC Melting Arctic, California Wildfires, Catch Up Hurricanes, GHG Sources, Glaciers, Pine Island, Sea Levels, Satellites, DSCOVR Impacts, Rainforests, Corals, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts, Food vs. Biofuel, Cereal Production Mitigation, Transportation, Building, Sequestration, Geoengineering Journals, Misc.…
sb admin | October 26, 2007Andrew Leonard at How the World Works has rounded up posts about the role of climate change in the California wildfires, and concludes that environmentalists are expressing themselves with nuance. Ben at Technology, Health & Development points out that the particulate-matter density in the areas affected by the fires is still less than levels typically seen in homes where biomass is burned for fuel.
Coturnix at A Blog Around the Clock reports that the Senate has passed a bill that includes a provision mandating public access to NIH-funded research â a major step for proponents of open…
sb admin | October 24, 2007The Chesapeake Watershed in the eastern U.S. covers over 500 miles, reaching north to Otsego Lake, NY and south to Virginia Beach, and traveling west to Blacksburg, VA and east to Ocean City, MD.  It's been called a "giant, sprawling system of rivers that all drain into one shallow tidal basin---the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal tributaries." (map). It's home to more than 3,600 species of plants and animals, with over 15 million people residing in it.  Â
A major river in the Chesapeake Watershed is the Anacostia River which extends from Montgomery County, MD through Washington,…
laelaps | October 23, 2007
Regardless of whether it was gradual or happened in a geologic instant, non-avian dinosaurs went extinct by approximately 65 million years ago, but the question of what they might be like today had they survived makes for some entertaining fiction. Most of such imaginary works are set on isolated islands or plateaus, "Lost Worlds" that have provided a refuge for dinosaurs (the most spectacular and enjoyable example being Weta Workshop's companion book to Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong entitled The World of Kong). Still, many of the dinosaurian hideaways do not take evolution into…
pharyngula | October 22, 2007Perhaps Barack Obama really wants to make sure I won't vote for him. At least, that's how I'm interpreting his attempts to couple environmentalism and religion.
Meeting the threat of global climate change will take hard work and faith, Obama said.
"Not a blind faith, not a faith of mere words, not a faith that ignores science, but an active searching faith," said Obama, a member of the United Church of Christ. "It's a faith that does not look at the hardship and pain and suffering in the world and use it all as an excuse for inaction or cynicism, but one that accepts the fact that although we…
illconsidered | October 21, 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 GW news roundup
(skip to bottom) Top Stories, Gore's Nobel, AIT Verdict, BAD, WFD, UK's Antarctic Claim, UMD Report Melting Arctic, NOAA Arctic Report Card, Coast Guard Base, Trekking, Mud Proxy, CO2 Absorption, Polls Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Sea Levels, ENSO, Satellites, DSCOVR Impacts, Rainforests, Wacky Weather, Floods & Droughts, Lake Lanier, Food vs. Biofuel, Cereal Production Mitigation, Shipping, Geoengineering, Adaptation…
nisbetmc | October 19, 2007Science magazine runs the following news report on Gore's Nobel prize and his impact on the policy debate and public opinion. The article quotes Steve Schneider, Michael Oppenheimer, Robert Watson, and other key scientists who note the immense importance of Gore's work on climate change over the years.
Climate researchers have known Gore as the rare policymaker who brings scientists in--and listens. When he visited Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, as a senator, recalls geochemist Wallace Broecker, "he said, 'I don't want a tour. I just want to sit around a table with…
chaoticutopia | October 18, 2007
How do we study our environment? Is it too complex a thing to quantitatively describe, and thus too complex to exhibit predictable behavior? I’ve been performing a thought experiment over the past few days, tossing around such questions. I’m not sure I can really adequately describe these thoughts with words or images. Still, I’m going to try.
Individual scientific experiments tend to be specific. We look at a certain property and try to explain it with a hypothesis, then test that hypothesis repeatedly under various conditions to show if it is valid or not. If it isn’t, we head back to…
illconsidered | October 16, 2007This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's GW news roundup
(skip to bottom) Top Stories, Nobel, Anti-Gore, UK Court Case Melting Arctic, Walruses, Humidity, Solar Cycle Hurricanes, CO2 Equivalents, 455 ppm, GHG Sources, Glaciers, Sea Levels, NASA, DSCOVR Impacts, Tropical Rainforests, Desertification, Wacky Weather, Floods & Droughts, Lake Lanier Food vs. Biofuel, Cereal Production Mitigation, Shipping, Buildings, Sequestration, Geoengineering, Adaptation Journals, Misc. Science, World Weather Archivist Kyoto-2, Carbon Tax,…
clock | October 15, 2007Since today is the Blog Action Day and I am swamped at work, I decided to republish one of my old posts concerning the environment (under the fold).
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Since 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…
tlambert | October 11, 2007Joint winners of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize:
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 is to be shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.
Indications of changes in the earth's future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness, and with the precautionary principle uppermost in our minds.…
tlambert | October 11, 2007A UK High Court judge has rejected a lawsuit by political activist Stuart Dimmock to stop the distribution of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth to British schools. Justice Burton agreed that
"Al Gore's presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate."
There were nine points where Burton decided that AIT differed from the IPCC and that this should be addressed in the Guidance Notes for teachers to be sent out with the movie.
Unfortunately a gaggle of useless journalists have misreported this decision as one that AIT contained nine scientific…
voltagegate | October 10, 2007Ecology is a study of interactions or relationships between organisms and the environment; the connectedness between living systems and non-living systems on the Earth. Ecology is, in a sense, a historical field, founded upon the Earth's far reaching and ever evolving natural history.
The term ecology comes from the Greek root words oikos logos, literally "the study of household," first combined by Ernst Haeckel in 1866. Haeckel was referring to the interactions within the house of nature, and we have used the word ecology (translated from the German Oekologie or Ãkologie) to describe complex…
revere | October 9, 2007Fumigating the soil before planting pretty much kills any pests that might be in it. Unfortunately the fumigant tends to seep up through the soil and expose workers and others nearby. When the highly toxic fumigant methyl bromide was banned under the Montreal protocol as a greenhouse gas an ozone depleting gas, growers started looking for a replacement. Now the EPA has approved one, methyl iodide. If you know any chemistry, you might suspect that replacing one halogen with another might not solve the problem. Indeed methyl iodide is nasty. If you want to use it you must employ a certified…
sciencewoman | October 8, 2007Wow! I originally picked five projects to include in my DonorsChoose challenge, and within a few days, one of the projects was fully funded thanks to my readers and other donors around the country. As of right now, four of the six projects currently in my challenge have been fully funded, and I'm going to have to pick some more projects to tickle your generous impulses.
Let me share with you the feedback I've gotten from teachers whose challenges I donated to:
Pond Biology: a universe in a drop of water is now becoming a reality for the students of Mr. Enguidanos, who wrote you this note:…
illconsidered | October 7, 2007This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's GW news roundup
(skip to bottom)
Top Stories, Ted Glick, Innovation, UN Warning, African floods, CSIRO/BOM Report Melting Arctic, NorthWest Passage, Resource Conflict, Greenland, Last Week's Meetings & Polls Hurricanes, Outlook, Canada's GHGs, Ozone, Sea Levels, Satellites, NASA Security Impacts, Tropical Rainforests, US Wildfires, Floods & Droughts, Food vs. Biofuel Mitigation, Architecture, Sequestration, Geoengineering Journals, Misc. Science Bali, Kyoto-2, Carbon Trade…