Environment
denialism | May 21, 2007Who are the global Warming Denialists?
A tougher question is, in a discipline as complex as climate science, how do you tell who the legitimate skeptics (those that ignore the reporting at the Independent for instance) are versus who are the denialists?
Again, it's simple, because denialism is about tactics. Which global warming critics are the ones alleging conspiracies, cherry-picking data, and incessantly moving the goalposts? Which organizations hire these hacks to denigrate legitimate science?
The most obvious example of a hack anti-science global warming denialist would have to be…
tlambert | May 20, 2007I wrote earlier about William Broad's many misrepresentations in his story that criticised Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Now Kevin Libin has produced an article for the National Post that makes Broad look like a paragon of virtue. Look at this:
James E. Hansen, a NASA scientist and one of Mr. Gore's advisors, agreed the movie has "imperfections" and "technical flaws." About An Inconvenient Truth's connection of rising hurricane activity to global warming - something refuted by storm experts - Mr. Hansen said, "we need to be more careful in describing the hurricane story than he is."…
jstemwedel | May 17, 2007 Dave at The World's Fair is collecting field data on coffee mugs. Or maybe he's trying to create a meme.
Anyway, he poses a bunch of questions which I seem to be unable to resist answering:
Can you show us your coffee cup?
Can you comment on it? Do you think it reflects on your personality?
Do you have any interesting anecdotes resulting from coffee cup commentary?
Can you try to get others to comment on it?
My answers will be restricted to the coffee delivery vessels (all three of them) I use at work, thus excluding the travel mug I use in the car on weekday mornings and the mugs I use…
purepedantry | May 16, 2007You remember how in The Day After Tomorrow global warming leads to a shutdown of the Gulf Stream and catastrophic cooling of Europe. (This would be before the scene where the cold chases the kid down the hallway of the New York Public Library.) Well, just in case you didn't know, that isn't going to happen:
The idea, which held climate theorists in its icy grip for years, was that the North Atlantic Current, an extension of the Gulf Stream that cuts northeast across the Atlantic Ocean to bathe the high latitudes of Europe with warmish equatorial water, could shut down in a greenhouse world…
hrynyshyn | May 15, 2007Anyone who uses Google's personalized home page service and never bothered to delete the default quote of the day was greeted this morning with one of third-rate sci-fi author Michael Crichton's more inane utterances."Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had." Just think about that for a moment as you consider the latest news on the possibility that global warming could stop what is somewhat inaccurately but widely known as the Gulf Stream from keeping Europe as warm as it is today.
According to Crichton, real…
lbillings | May 12, 2007In 2006, Shannon Babb won both first prize at the Intel Science Talent Search (STS) and the prestigious Seaborg Award at Intel Intel ISEF for her work tracking water quality around her home in Utah. The Seaborg Award allowed her to travel to the 2006 Nobel Prizes in Stockholm, Sweden. Shannon is currently a freshman in Watershed Sciences at Utah State University.
We spoke with her last week about her Intel ISEF experiences.
Q: What are you currently working on at Utah State?
A: I'm researching paleoclimate indicators and paleocurrents in the Neoproterozoic Era, so I'm working with about 1-…
jjacquet | May 10, 2007One of our longtime heros of Shifting Baselines is Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Mark Dowie. In this recent essay he takes the Bush administration to task over their plans for large scale (too large?) aquaculture. What he notes is that, "while the U.S. Congress recently passed amendments to federal fisheries law that actually improved, built on, and strengthened the Fisheries Conservation Act of 1996, other branches of the U.S. government (NOAA and the White House) were doing this."
Blue Pastures in a Public Trust
The Bush administration has made bringing industrial aquaculture to the…
thescian | May 9, 2007A news story at BBC on the Australian city of Perth.
The Australian of the year 2007, environmentalist Tim Flannery, once predicted that Perth in Western Australia could become the world's first ghost metropolis, its population forced to abandon the city due to lack of water.
...
People consume a lot of energy. It is a car-dependent city with little public transport. Many of the luxury houses overlooking the ocean (known locally as "starter mansions") boast currently fashionable black roofs that soak up the heat in temperatures of up to 42 degrees in summer, and produce a greater need for air…
clock | May 8, 2007It could be the seasonal use of pesticides, as this study suggests, or it could be seasonality in nutrition of mothers and infants, or seasonality of environmental stressors, or seasonality of mothers' hormone profiles. Most likely all or most of these and other factors play a role, and the relative importance of the factors differs between geographic regions, between socioeconomic strata, and between times in history.
But there is one factor that has been repeatedly demonstrated to play no role at all: the position of planets, moons and stars, as seen from Earth, at the moment of birth of…
grrlscientist | May 8, 2007tags: salmon, wild Pacific salmon, commercial salmon fishing
Approximately 200 chefs from restaurants in 33 states have signed a letter that was delivered to legislators in Washington DC today, asking Congress to pass laws that will restore healthy habitats for the decimated wild salmon species along the Pacific coast. The letter was inspired by last year's federal shutdown of 88% of the commercial salmon fishing along 700 miles of coastline in California and Oregon and is led by renowned chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in San Francisco.
Marine scientists said the closure was necessary to…
grrlscientist | May 7, 2007tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
"Spruce Grouse."
Image appears here with the kind permission of the photographer, Pamela Wells.
[Larger image].
Birds in Science
A paper was recently published in PLoS One that examines the reproductive and evolutionary arms race between male and female ducks to control paternity. Basically, if males develop large and elaborate genital structures that allow them to manipulate females and to bias paternity in their favor, then females will co-evolve specific genital anatomy that allows them to regain some control over…
sarahdasher | May 7, 2007The Earth isn't the only thing that's hotter than ever.
Rob Reiner's famously clueless rock-and-roll trio is reuniting for an unexpected reason: to save the world from global warming.
Twenty-three years after their debut in the cult classic This is Spinal Tap, guitarist Nigel Tufnel, singer David St. Hubbins, and bassist Derek Smalls will take the stage again at Wembley Stadium in London, as part of the Live Earth concert series. Other luminaries in the 24-hour, 150-artist, Live Earth lineup include Red Hot Chili Peppers,The Beastie Boys, Black Eyed Peas and Madonna.
As part of the media…
voltagegate | May 7, 2007Oprah makes me sick. She recently had another uber-hypocritical show about environmental issues and I thought it would be appropriate to repost my reaction to her first show about "going green", which was aired last June. Hey, at least her blouse is green, right?
Has anyone noticed how Oprah collapses into a pool of plasmodium when her guests start talking science? Sure, when it's relationship issues or the inner child, she's all over it, wielding advice like a psycho-babble hammer.
I got a phone call from my mother yesterday afternoon."Turn on channel four, Oprah's talking about global…
revere | May 5, 2007It may seem to have nothing to do flyways for avian influenza virus, but bear with me. In 1962 there was another flyway that revealed Soviet missiles in Cuba:
It was 0737 in the morning of Sunday 14 October 1962 when Major Richard Heyser began the crossing of Cuba in his U-2. He flew almost due north-on a course some 60 miles to the west of Havana and passed over the northerly beaches six minutes later. In that brief timespan be took 928 pictures, which covered a swath 75 miles wide. The resolution of his best shots was a matter of three feet.
Once past the target, he headed for McCoy Air…
sb admin | May 4, 2007I've been away from my computer for the past several days, so these links are all from the early part of the week:
Revere at Effect Measure reports that the situation at National Institute of Environmental Health Science is revealing more damage to federal science.
Jacob Goldstein at the WSJ Health Blog discusses the implications of a Supreme Court ruling on drug patents.
Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sigillata wants to see more regulation of herbal products, but fears the FDA's new guidance on complementary and alternative medicine products might backfire.
Kate Sheppard at Gristmill has the…
cmooney | May 3, 2007Via Guns, Germs, & Steeled, I just noticed that Steven Hawyard of the American Enterprise Instiute and Pacific Research Institute has released a rather tacky parody movie of Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. I just watched it; you can do so here.
In general, Hayward is trying to position himself as a moderate, someone who accepts some human caused global warming but who isn't an alarmist like Al Gore and those wacky environmentalists. There's just one problem with this stance: Hayward was aiming straight at the scientific consensus as recently as two years ago:
What do we actually know? The…
hrynyshyn | May 2, 2007It's been a bad week for the US Interior Department, and it's only Tuesday. First a deputy assistant secretary resigned after her habit of passing endangered species information to private groups was exposed for all to see. Then more than three dozen scientists signed a letter condemning the Bush administration's interpretation of the Endangered Species Act. That would make it a good week for endangered species, though.
Julie MacDonald's resignation came a week before the beginning of a series of House committee hearings on political interference with biologists. Seems an inspector general's…
pharyngula | May 1, 2007Steve Milloy, junk science peddler and loser, has a new crusade: he is opposed to compact fluorescent light bulbs.
How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent light bulb? About US$4.28 for the bulb and labour -- unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about US$2,004.28, which doesn't include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health.
Sound crazy?
Yes, Steve, it does sound crazy. It doesn't help that it's coming from you, either. Can we get more details on Brandy Bridges' story?
Uh-oh. It's World Net…
mikethemadbiologist | April 29, 2007Here are some links for you. Let's blind you with some science:
I argue that there's a difference between ecological interactions and natural selection.
At Effect Measure, revere describes the politicization of the CDC and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. On a related note, see here too.
Here's how starfish eat.
The other stuff:
Massachusetts' economy is roaring. It must be all of the gays and libruls...
Matt Stoller and Ezra Klein rip into Doug Schoen, a 'Democratic' consultant who argues that the Democrats should sound like Republicans. Because everybody…
sb admin | April 27, 2007Did you know that Wednesday was World Malaria Day? Farzaneh and Aman at Technology, Health & Development marked the occasion with posts about initiatives that are tackling the disease, while Merrill Goozner at GoozNews wonders why the World Banks seems to lack a sense of urgency on the issue.
Regular ScienceBlogs readers probably noticed that bloggersâ use of charts from scientific journals, and the larger issue of open scientific discourse, was a hot topic this week. It all started when Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle put up an informative post about a study recently published in the…