gregladen | February 13, 2013The The Origin Of Species by Charles Darwin was published over 150 years go. At the time, several different alternative theories of the origin and history of life were being discussed in the West. Some of these theories were theological. Theological ideas included a literal translation of the bible, with the flora, the fauna, and humans created in three separate but related creation events on a freshly made earth just a few thousand years ago. Another theological idea had an Abrahamic God's hand involved in the history of life but in ways we were not likely to understand until after death…
gregladen | February 13, 2013At 11:30 AM eastern time today, an act of "civil disobedience will take place around at the East Gate of the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, just east of the picture-postcard zone." #NoKXL is the hashtag.
It is time, apparently. This is a time when more of the money that is out there is in the hands of a very small number of people and corporations, and many of these people and corporations are paying to maintain the status quo, and that status quo involves keeping our economy, or society, our species firmly planted on a track leading to the edge of a very tall cliff. Not the fiscal…
gregladen | February 12, 2013So, I posted something at Daily Kos you might find interesting:
As we wrestle with hard science and hard policy and the interaction between the two, the real problem we face are made much harder to solve because of the seemingly incessant drumbeat of science denialism.
Climate change is real and is mainly caused by humans, but climate change science denialism is an industry, a cottage industry, or a hobby for many. Big oil pays for the production of anti climate science rhetoric and activism. Anti climate science activists exhibit bizarre non-scientific behavior that goes beyond denying…
gregladen | February 12, 2013Minnesota has three things you may have heard about: Cold weather, “Minnesota Nice,” and a vigorous training program in Passive Aggressive Behavior (PAB). Unless you know about things, you probably didn’t know any of that.1
The part about the cold weather is neither here nor there with Global Warming causing it to go away. The latter two are interrelated and complex, and can only be understood through a great deal of analysis. And, since we don’t have time to put everyone in the state into Freudian therapy, I’ll just give an example.
This week we celebrate Darwin’s Birthday, and Abe Lincoln’s…
gregladen | February 12, 2013Happy Birthday Charles Darwin!
Oh, and Abe Lincoln too.
For Darwin's birthday, I want to discuss the uses of the terms "Darwinism, Darwinian, and Darwinist." Many have written about this and many don't like any of those words, some seem to equally dislike all three. A couple of years back, writing for the New York Times, Carl Safina said,
Equating evolution with Charles Darwin ignores 150 years of discoveries, including most of what scientists understand about evolution. Such as: Gregor Mendel’s patterns of heredity (which gave Darwin’s idea of natural selection a mechanism — genetics —…
gregladen | February 11, 2013I already told you about this. In a BBC/David Attenborough special on Africa, this specific statement was made: That part of the African continent had warmed by 3.5 degrees. This was corrected by Leo Hickman. That datum is invalid. Africa has indeed been affected by climate change, but that specific factoid is incorrect. Now, the BBC is patting itself on the back for correcting the special, but they are doing it wrong.
From the BBC Story:
The presenter then commented on the additional challenges presented by climate change, adding that parts of Africa now face higher temperatures.
However…
gregladen | February 11, 2013Today, a new Climate SOS Blogathon starts at the Daily Kos. I'll be contributing a post tomorrow, which I'll let you know about. The other contributors include an amazing list of bloggers, scientists, policy experts, and at least one federal level elected official of which I'm aware.
The first blog posted is: Keystone XL pipeline is not in the U.S. National Interest by A. Siegel who blogs at Get Energy Smart. NOW!!!!.
The list of posts will be managed HERE.
gregladen | February 11, 2013This graphic is from GRID-Arendal, a Norwegian Foundation collaborating with the UN Environment Programme. It shows CO2 concentrations in the ocean going up over a period of 20 eyars, and the corresponding drop in pH over the same time period.
Ocean acidification is a serious effect of climate change.
As carbon concentrations in the atmosphere increase, so do concentrations in the ocean, with resultant acidification as a natural chemical process.
There are more climate change related graphics HERE.
gregladen | February 11, 2013Everyone knows that Darwin was a biologist, and in many ways he was the first prominent modern biologist. Though Darwin scholars know this, many people do not realize that he was also a geologist. Really, he was mainly a geologist on the day he stepped foot on The Beagle for his famous five year tour. This is especially true if we count his work on coral reefs as a geological study, even though coral reefs are a biological phenomenon. After all, the standing model for coral reef formation at the time came from the field of Geology.
To exemplify this, I've put together a list of several…
gregladen | February 10, 2013Climate experts have pointed out that Nemo, the very bad nor’easter that just hit the Northeastern US and Maritimes, is partly an effect of global warming. Some meteorologists have responded with an incorrect response, a recitation of a now tired and useless mumbling retort that I’m afraid may even have it origin among scientists who should know better, and at the very least was kept alive by them for far too long: “Well, you can’t really attribute any given weather event to climate change.” Some regular people who are not climate scientists have repeated that faleshood as well. Then there…
gregladen | February 9, 2013Climate change has had a big impact in Africa. We can certainly talk about that some time. But when a David Attenborough BBC special mentioned one aspect of climate change impact they got the facts wrong. Leo Hickman of The Environment Blog at The Guardian noticed the error and wrote a very interesting blog post tracking down how this happened. The BBC, in response, has removed the specific reference from the special.
This is important because it is important to get it right, but it is also important because it demonstrates that those whom climate science denialists incorrectly call "…
gregladen | February 9, 2013Don't forget to register for CONvergence. If you register early you get a break on the rate. Details at their site.
For those who don't now, CONvergence is the largest fan run fantasy and science fiction convention, and it is held in the Twin Cities at or near the 4th of July. And, even better, every year for the last several years, Skepchick has organized a bunch of panels at The CON on skepticism, science and stuff, and for the last few years I've been invited to be on some of those panels, and have helped organize. Last Year Free Thought Blogs joined with Skepchick so some of those…
gregladen | February 9, 2013"You will be a restless wanderer on the earth" -Genesis 4:12
Today, a few of us visited the Twin Cities Home School Creation Science Fair of 2013 at its new location. The fair used to be held in the historic Har Mar Shopping Mall but for some reason it has wandered up the road and across Snelling Avenue to a nearby Christian college on the shores of beautiful Lake Johanna Lake, in Roseville, Minnesota.
We were, verily, Mike, Angry by Choice, and me. Angry arrived separately and reviewed the exhibits on his own, and Mike and I visited nearly all of the 23 posters together and spoke to many…
gregladen | February 9, 2013Skeptically Speaking's 200th show is coming up soon! But first, there is show #199. But before I mention show #199, I want to remind you of show #198, because I was in it:
#198 Nature’s Compass and New Caledonian Crows
This week, we’re looking at some of the amazing abilities exhibited by our animal cousins. We’ll speak to James Gould, co-author of Nature’s Compass: The Mystery of Animal Navigation, about the varying strategies animals use to find their way across all kinds of distances. And biological anthropologist Greg Laden discusses new research on the surprising reasoning abilities of…
gregladen | February 8, 2013I wasn't living in Boston yet; Albany, instead. But at the time I was actually travelling by car out to California, and was in Texas when this particular storm caught up with me. Texas got iced over, the Rio Grande froze, the citrus crop was destroyed and I spent two nights in Big Spring. Two months later there were still semi's littering the roadside on Route 40 and elsewhere. This storm was the end of coastal residential development in New England. Between this storm and a few bad coastal storms that came over the next few years, thousands of homes were destroyed without being rebuilt,…
gregladen | February 8, 2013This graph shows the extremes in one-day precipitation in a given month relative to the amount of precip in that month for the Northeastern US. So, if the green bar is at 30%, that means that that 30% of month's precip fell in one event. The way this is computed is a little complicated because it is hard to define an "event" in time and space in relation to the time and space coordinates (as it were) we normally use. Check the source of the graph for a more detailed explanation. The point of this graph is that the opposite is true from what many expect: It isn't the case that the snow was…
gregladen | February 8, 2013Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute joins Scienceblogs.com, and here is his introductory post!
Welcome to the first post in my new National Geographic ScienceBlogs column “Significant Figures.” I look forward to sharing my thoughts with you on a wide range of environmental science-related issues, data, and people, and to a productive and constructive interaction....
If you've hear me mention something about "something cool about to happen on the blogs" lately, this is it. Welcome Peter!
gregladen | February 8, 2013The #LearningSpace Google Hangout was talking today about the Galileoscope project. Galileo invented (I'm sure the story is more complex) the telescope and all that, and the Galileoscope project is HERE.
The Galileoscope is a high-quality, low-cost telescope kit developed by a team of leading astronomers, optical engineers, and science educators. No matter where you live, with this easy-to-assemble, 50-mm (2-inch) diameter, 25- to 50-power achromatic refractor, you can see the celestial wonders that Galileo Galilei first glimpsed 400 years ago and that still delight stargazers today. These…
gregladen | February 8, 2013... which I imagine is a lot of people. It is brilliant. Yellow, so you can find it among your other utensils and remember that it is for bananas. Banana shaped, which makes it godly, almost, as you all know. Safer than a knife. But what is most wonderful about the Hutzler 571 are the product reviews on Amazon's site, which rival (almost) the product reviews for Bic's "pens for her" (remember that?). Check it out!
gregladen | February 8, 2013Here's a graph from the USDA:
This comes from a post by Peter Sinclair: USDA: Warming Will Devastate Agriculture.
Also from that post, this interview with Phil Robertson of Michigan State University related to the question of C02 as "plant food."