environment
pharyngula | November 25, 2011Somebody clone Attenborough, quick — the British nature program must continue forever! His latest documentary is Frozen Planet, and all I've seen of it is short clips on youtube and various other sites…which just makes me want to see more.
Here is a time lapse video of a brinicle forming: a column of cold water descending from the surface which is saltier than the surrounding sea, so it both sinks and remains liquid as it oozes downward, but it freezes the less briny water around it. It's slow, but if you're a slow-moving echinoderm, it's like the icy finger of a vindictive god reaching down…
esiegel | November 16, 2011"She eyes me like a pisces when I am weak
I've been locked inside your Heart Shaped box for weeks
I've been drawn into your magnet tar pit trap
I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black" -Nirvana, Heart-Shaped Box
By looking at the right combinations of wavelengths of light, one can literally find almost anything in the depths of space.
Image credit: Daniel Marquardt, of nebula IC 1805.
But back on Earth, we have some surprising natural features that have been captured from above with nothing more than a camera.
Image credit: NASA / STS-129 / Space Shuttle Atlantis, retrieved from…
tsmith | November 15, 2011I rarely write about climate change. As much as it's been hashed out amongst climate scientists, and even many of the former "climate skeptics" have now changed their tune, I readily accept that climate change is happening, and is happening largely due to human activities. More importantly for my field, climate change is also having effects on human health in a number of different ways, from the movement of insect vectors into new areas, to warming of the seas leading to more extreme weather conditions, to the loss of coral reefs and the freshwater that these reefs protect from the…
esiegel | November 11, 2011"After all, facts are facts, and although we may quote one to another with a chuckle the words of the Wise Statesman, 'Lies - damned lies - and statistics,' still there are some easy figures the simplest must understand, and the astutest cannot wriggle out of." -Leonard Courtney, 1895
"The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat oneself." -Philip James Bailey
In the study of any scientific field, there are two great perils that you have to be careful to avoid: fraud and incompetence. Incompetence could be as innocuous as making a simple mistake in your analysis, a contamination of your data…
esiegel | November 7, 2011"Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity." -Joseph Addison
One of the most brilliant phenomena found in our atmosphere is that of a lightning strike.
Shown below in breathtaking slow-motion, somewhere on the order of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 electrons are exchanged in a single bolt between the clouds and the Earth's surface.
Video credit: Tom A. Warner from ZT Research; credit also WeatherVideoHD.TV, and retrieved from Jest.…
pharyngula | November 3, 2011Hey, I know the Elwha river! I think we stopped there on my honeymoon. Lovely place, the Olympic Peninsula. And getting even lovelier if they are ripping out unneeded dams and restoring the rivers. There's something so satisfying about a timelapse of a dam being demolished.
Next, restore the watershed and the salmon runs. Whatever, I've got to find an opportunity to relax on the peninsula someday again, before I die.
(Also on FtB)
esiegel | October 24, 2011"Science is facts; just as houses are made of stone, so is science made of facts. But a pile of stones is not a house, and a collection of facts is not necessarily science." -Jules Henri Poincaré
The higher you fall from, the faster you'll be moving when you hit the ground.
Image credit: Marianne Holland.
Seems like the most obvious thing in the world. You know this intuitively, of course, based on all your experience in the world. Drop an egg from too great a height and it breaks.
While you wouldn't be afraid to jump off of a diving board like the one above, jumping from a greater height…
pharyngula | October 23, 2011That wacky climate change denier and radio weather broadcaster Anthony Watts took a brave step a while back, and I commend him for it. He was enthused about an independent research project, the Berkeley Earth Project, that would measure the planet's temperature over the last centuries and compare it to the work of NOAA and NASA on earth's temperature — he apparently expected that it would show that NASA and NOAA had been inflating the data. He was so confident that he went on the record saying:
I'm prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.…
pharyngula | October 17, 2011A group of scientists have done the right thing: they authored an environmental report, and are now publicizing the changes the Texas state administration tried to impose on it. This is going to backfire on the politicians: rather than hiding away the science that conflicts with their ideology, the censorship is highlighting the corruption and denialism.
Officials in Rick Perry's home state of Texas have set off a scientists' revolt after purging mentions of climate change and sea-level rise from what was supposed to be a landmark environmental report. The scientists said they were disowning…
gregladen | October 13, 2011...I'd like to talk about an observation I made while writing for a now defunct monthly rag about global warming back in the early 1990s, and have always wanted to pursue formally, as a research project. Since I've not gotten to it yet, I thought it might be fun to outline the idea more informally, to give you, literally, a sketch or two that makes the point....
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esiegel | September 28, 2011"If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let 'em go, because, man, they're gone." -Jack Handey
Take a look at our home planet, Earth, and one of the things you'll notice is that over 70% of the surface is coated in water.
Image credit: NASA / Apollo 17.
We all know why this is, of course: it's because the Earth's oceans float atop the rocks and dirt that make up what we know as land.
This concept of floatation and buoyancy -- where the less dense objects rise above the denser ones, which sink to the bottom -- does much more than just explain the oceans.
This same principle…
jdupuis | September 26, 2011My 2011 summer reading was pretty meagre this year. For various reasons too boring to go into here, there wasn't much actually much vacation for me this summer. I think I'll probably have a better December/Christmas reading list than summer. Such is life.
Anyways, what I did read was pretty good, so let's get to it.
Bradbury, Ray and Ron Wimberly. Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes: The Authorized Adaptation. New York: Hill and Wang, 2011. 144pp. ISBN-13: 978-0809087464
Bradbury, Ray and Dennis Calero. Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles: The Authorized Adaptation. New York…
pharyngula | September 26, 2011Good news, everyone! The dire predictions of the IPCC about the effects of CO2 have been found to be wrong. (I expect that's all the denialists will tell you.)
The bad news is that the actual observations are showing that the IPCC predictions were too conservative, and that the pace of climate change is faster than predicted.
It's Monday, so you're probably already depressed, and a little more pessimism won't make you feel much worse…so watch the video, have a cup of coffee, despair.
(Also on FtB)
pharyngula | September 25, 2011This is the way to help save endangered species: encourage humans to reproduce less. The Center for Biological Diversity is distributing Endangered Species Condoms as part of their 7 Billion and Counting campaign to increase awareness of the effects of overpopulation. More non-procreative recreational sex…to save the planet!
(Also on FtB)
pharyngula | September 11, 2011This is tragic. A unique site where the giant cuttlefish migrates and breeds is under threat by the construction of a desalination plant that would render the local waters unsupportable to cuttlefish life. This must be stopped!
There is a petition: sign it.
(via Cuttlefish, of course)
(Also on FtB)
Friday Fun: We Need To Do More When It Comes To Having Brief, Panicked Thoughts About Climate Change
jdupuis | September 9, 2011The Onion nails it on this one: We Need To Do More When It Comes To Having Brief, Panicked Thoughts About Climate Change.
The problem with solving all our climate change-related problems is basically that all the people on the planet are human.
Indeed, if there was ever a time when a desperate call to take action against global warming should race through our heads as we lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, that time is now.
Many well-intentioned people will take 20 seconds out of their week to consider the consequences of the lifestyle they've chosen, perhaps contemplating how their reliance…
esiegel | September 3, 2011"As long as one person lives in darkness then it seems to be a responsibility to tell other people." -Bill Hicks
If you've ever been out in the wilderness at night, in a place where it truly gets dark, and where you've got, as the English band Keane would tell you,
Clear Skies,you will find yourself treated to an amazing view of the night sky.
Image credit: Jerry Lodriguss.
On a moonless night, depending on the quality of your darkness, not only is the Milky Way visible, but anywhere from 6,000 up to a maximum of 45,000 naked-eye stars are available to the keenest of observers.
Although,…
mikethemadbiologist | September 1, 2011The old saw that 'we hang together or we get hung separately' is a perfect description of how the left has disintegrated into irrelevance. Too often, groups will focus on modest gains for their own narrow constituency, while selling out other allies. Over the long term, each component of the coalition is so weakened, making it impossible to have any influence. Case in point: union support for the Keystone XL pipeline (which will ship oil extracted from tar sands in Canada). John Aravosis explains:
But I'd like to highlight the environment vs. "jobs" controversy, and the union's role in…
pharyngula | August 31, 2011There's a reason I really despise Libertarianism…but still find them hilariously twisted. Here's a case of a columnist defending the science of Rick Perry. You know that evolution stuff? It's not that important. Creationism is a waste of time and it makes Perry look "unsophisticated"…but so what? There's a real problem here, and it is all those liberals who've fallen for the junk science of "global warming".
It is interesting watching the nation's defenders of reason, empirical evidence, and science fail to display a hint of skepticism over the transparently political "science" of global…
pharyngula | August 30, 2011Go watch this video of Bill Nye explaining global warming to a Fox News babbler. You can see why he's a national treasure: he cocks those eyebrows, he clearly thinks he's dealing with a knucklehead, but he goes on to slowly and carefully explain the science to him. All those years of children's programming pay off perfectly when dealing with our conservative media — treating the announcers like small angry children is just perfect.
You can also see the shortcomings of television, though. The patient, thorough approach bumps up against the tiny time windows and short attention spans all too…