Environment
clock | July 17, 2006The latest question in the Ask A ScienceBlogger series is actually not that easy to answer, though some have, so far, valiantly tried:
Is every species of living thing on the planet equally deserving of protection?...
My attempt at the answer is under the fold....
My first knee-jerk answer is "Yes, of course!" Then comes a qualification: "As much as we can". I guess I could just leave it at that.
But why do I think that? Why people who answer with a more-or-less guarded 'Yes' think that way? Apparently, and I cannot now think of the source where I read this taxonomy (Google found this),…
hrynyshyn | July 13, 2006A study just published in the journal Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management concludes that the Prince William Sound ecosystem has fully recovered 17 years after the Exxon Valdez struck a reef and lost 11 million gallons of crude to the Gulf of Alaska. That's not the most interesting part of the study, though.
No, that would be the disclaimer, which I reproduce in full for your convenience:
Disclaimer--The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support provided by ExxonMobil for the time needed to prepare this article; however, the opinions and conclusions expressed herein are…
cevans | July 12, 2006The second in a two-part distillation of a cover story about NASA, politics, and the new power generation that I just finished for the LA Alternative. To get up to speed, see the previous entry.
The CEV -- Ares, or whatever -- is not the first attempt NASA has made to replace its Shuttle fleet with something more appealing to an electorate weaned on the Star Wars movies. The last ten years have seen a lot of blustery attempts at making a "Single Stage to Orbit" craft, that is to say, one which could be completely reusable and would not need expensive and heavy external fuel tanks. An SSTO,…
stoat | July 11, 2006The betting on climate change thing seems to have gone rather quiet. This post is prompted by a comment posted to an old entry on my old blog Probably not betting on climate with Lubos Motl (that post is still worth reading, I think, for the attempt to calculate what are "fair odds". In some email discussion afterwards, I think I discovered that there isn't really a good answer to that question). But if you haven't seen the circuit before, look at James A's stuff and Brian Schmidt's. That last post offers a list of bets that GS is prepared to take.
My anonymus commenter said:
I have been…
cevans | July 10, 2006The following is the first in a two-part distillation of a cover story about NASA, politics, and the new power generation that I just finished for the LA Alternative.
From this surreal atmosphere, as close to the belt of the equator as we can get in this country, we send people into outer space.
Few Americans think of Cape Canaveral in their day-to-day. They are consumed, not wrongly, by the machineries of life: raising gas prices, magazine subscriptions, college tuition, first dates, dinner plans. Outer space is already an abstract enough concept for humanity to grasp; couple that with a…
clock | July 10, 2006This post, originally published on January 16, 2005, was modified from one of my written prelims questions from early 2000.
EVOLUTIONARY PHYSIOLOGY OF BIOLOGICAL CLOCKS
"Circadian clocks allow organisms to predict, instead of merely react to, cyclic (predictable) changes in the environment". A sentence similar to this one is the opening phrase of many a paper in the field of chronobiology. Besides becoming a truth by virtue of frequent repetition, such a statement appeals to common sense. It is difficult to imagine a universe in which it was not true. Yet, the data supporting the above…
bcohen | July 7, 2006I'm following Dave's lead here, who was following Nick Hornby's lead, who could probably be made aware of our lead following and then wax poetic on the flourishing of his format. Except I'm sure he's busy. Lunching with Cusack. Unless Cusack is lunching with Anjelica Huston, like in The Player. Damn, Robert Altman's good. Can we talk about McCabe and Mrs. Miller?
Did I get sidetracked?
These are the books on my nightstand, and beside my desk at my office. They shift frequently, but this is where things stand today. As of now, early July, the first ten are nightstand-based, the last…
evolvingthoughts | July 6, 2006The question offered up to stump those ivory tower eggheads this week, is:
On July 5, 1996, Dolly the sheep became the first successfully cloned mammal. Ten years on, has cloning developed the way you expected it to?...
Pretty much. I expected it to be both illuminating about the way development proceeds (complicated, as it turns out, and not all that surprising), and socially insignificant. After all, we have been cloning organisms in hothouses and wombs for a long time. The earth still revolves.
What I find much more interesting (not than the biology, though; that's just plain cool), is…
bushwells | July 5, 2006I'm on the road and visiting the Midwestern homelands. This evening, I'm in Madison where a former classmate (and longtime friend) and I will join our grad advisor and his wife for dinner. The newly minted professor emeritis doesn't know that we're showing up so the element of surprise should be entertaining. In lieu of fresh bloviation, I'll recap a classic rambling Bushwellian essay which touches upon ticks, Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Singer, and Jersey devil deer.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 2005
Although I still pine for my former…
clock | July 3, 2006
This is the third in the series of posts designed to provide the basics of the field of Chronobiology. This post is interesting due to its analysis of history and sociology of the discipline, as well as a look at the changing nature of science. You can check out the rest of Clock Tutorials here.
It appears that every scientific discipline has its own defining moment, an event that is touted later as the moment of "birth" of the field. This can be a publication of a paper (think of Watson and Crick) or a book ("Origin of Species" anyone?). In the case of Chronobiology, it was the 1960…
scientificactivist | June 28, 2006Yesterday, the AP released a story describing the general approval within the scientific community of the science behind Al Gore's new documentary An Inconvenient Truth
The AP contacted more than 100 top climate researchers by e-mail and phone for their opinion. Among those contacted were vocal skeptics of climate change theory. Most scientists had not seen the movie, which is in limited release, or read the book.
But those who have seen it had the same general impression: Gore conveyed the science correctly; the world is getting hotter and it is a manmade catastrophe-in-the-making caused by…
drorzel | June 27, 2006There was an interesting article in the Times today about the possibility of "geoengineering":
In the past few decades, a handful of scientists have come up with big, futuristic ways to fight global warming: Build sunshades in orbit to cool the planet. Tinker with clouds to make them reflect more sunlight back into space. Trick oceans into soaking up more heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
Their proposals were relegated to the fringes of climate science. Few journals would publish them. Few government agencies would pay for feasibility studies. Environmentalists and mainstream scientists said…
tlambert | June 26, 2006Judd Legum has already debunked Richard Lindzen's repetition of Benny Peiser's discredited study, but I want to add one point. Lindzen wrote:
More recently, a study in the journal Science by the social scientist Nancy Oreskes claimed that a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge Database for the years 1993 to 2003 under the key words "global climate change" produced 928 articles, all of whose abstracts supported what she referred to as the consensus view. A British social scientist, Benny Peiser, checked her procedure and found that only 913 of the 928 articles had abstracts at all, and that…
grrlscientist | June 26, 2006
Six flamingos, Phoenicopterus ruber,
bored with people-watching at the Caldwell Zoo in Tyler, Texas.
(Can you see all six birds?)
Image appears here with the kind permission of the photographer, Michael C. Hamilton (contact).
Birds in Science
A new study of global avian biodiversity published in the free open access journal, PLoS Biology, provides the first strong evidence that avian species' range areas are smallest in the tropics and larger in temperate and polar regions. A smaller range area means that many different types of creatures can be accommodated in the same space, explaining…
clock | June 20, 2006Let's see how many people incapable of spelling 'plane' arrive here by the way of Google. But I am talking about a real 'plain' - a big one, in China, and about some very real live snakes as well!
A good friend (and ex-neighbor) of mine, Kevin Messenger, is in China right now, surveying herpetofauna (that is - reptiles and amphibians, for the non-biologists here) in a remote area of central China, rarely visited by Weesterners, and never before surveyed by scientists.
He is one of those natural-born herpetologists - he lives, breathes and dreams snakes. When I lived in Raleigh I would often…
clock | June 20, 2006 This is an early post of mine, written on February 11, 2005, a rare one in which I discuss my own lack of religion:
I had major computer problems last week so didn't think I would have the time to write a blog entry of my own for the third installment of the Carnival Of The Godless (found here), so was going to post a link to an old post, but the title of one of the new Carnival entries, I, Bloginette, made me think that my blog also has a bird as symbol (a quail, not a magpie), and I also remembered how much I loved the old TV series "I, Claudius", and how wonderful it would sound if I…
j7uy5 | June 15, 2006President Bush got a lot of credit for designating the Northwestern
Hawaiian Islands a national monument. The
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/science/earth/15hawaii.html?ex=1308024000&en=ce5a20136199dc60&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">description
in the New York Times was especially glowing.
Reading it, you would have no clue that it was not his idea
in the first place. The Washington Post
is a little better,
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/14/AR2006061402455.html">giving
credit to the guy who came up with the idea…
tlambert | June 15, 2006Matt Drudge recently linked to a web site claiming that climate experts disagreed with Al Gore about global warming. Hundreds of blogs uncritically swallowed the claim.
One of the few skeptics was Bruce Perens who wrote
We ran a pointer to a global-warming-doubter story this morning. Here's the link. I decided to pull the story after reviewing the author attribution (he's from a paid political PR agency), and the venue's other coverage on this issue. Sorry.
Hey, I've got my doubts about global warming too. But it does seem that the "con" side of the argument often comes from people who are…
cmooney | June 15, 2006Seeing as I'm debating Bethell on NPR's Science Friday tomorrow, I thought I would begin the warm-up session here by posting some samples of what he's had to say about various scientific topics, starting with the biggie--global warming. I am not going to comment on these passages; I'm simply going to list three quotes, number them, and then leave the rest up to you folks. You were excellent when it came to helping me prep to debate Ron Bailey, so I'm sure you will be equally awesome this time around.
Here goes:
1. It is often said: If we don't know whether to take an umbrella to work, how can…
cmooney | June 12, 2006I'm pleased to see that the Las Vegas Sun covered the remarks made by myself and General Clark at the Yearly Kos science panel last Friday. I made sure to give my comments a local hook, and the paper picked up on that. Get ready for a long excerpt:
Mooney specifically criticized President Bush and made passing reference to Nevada congressman Jim Gibbons, a Republican candidate for governor. Mooney noted that Gibbons wrote and released a report last year, with Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., titled "Mercury in Perspective: Fact and Fiction About the Debate Over Mercury."
Billed as an exhaustive…