environment
grrlscientist | April 19, 2010tags: The Danger of Science Denial, vaccines, modern medicine, poverty, environmental destruction, science, cultural observation, film maker, animal behavior, Michael Specter, TEDTalks, streaming video
Vaccine-autism claims, "Frankenfood" bans, the herbal cure craze: All point to the public's growing fear (and, often, outright denial) of science and reason, says Michael Specter. He warns the trend spells disaster for human progress.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their…
grrlscientist | April 18, 2010tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
~ Arnold Lobel [1933-1987] author of many popular children's books.
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited…
jstemwedel | April 16, 2010Dr. Free-Ride: So, you went on a field trip today to a lagoon.
Younger offspring: Yeah, I went to [Name redacted] Creek and [Name redacted] Lagoon.
Dr. Free-Ride: You know, I'm going to redact the names to protect your privacy. Tell me what you saw on your field trip that was interesting.
Younger offspring: I saw a lot of things on the field trip. Some I didn't know what they were called. I saw caterpillars, dandelions, cattails, and I have in my pocket some cattail leaves and some tules.
Dr. Free-Ride: So you do.
Younger offspring: (consulting notes made during the field trip in a…
elerner | April 16, 2010[This post comes courtesy of the State Department's Katherine Musgrove, who is an economic officer in the Office of Economic Policy and Summit Coordination in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. The Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas is having its first ministerial right now in Washington D.C., and you can watch the end of it here
Katherine is ready to field any questions you have about the ECPA and the Ministerial, so ask away in comments.]
In the Western Hemisphere Affairs bureau at the U.S. Department of State, we have been working to advance policies and programs to…
elerner | April 16, 2010The webcast of day two is , starting at 8:30 Eastern.
Update:The feed is down until 12:30, when Todd Stern (U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change) and Jacques Gabriel (Minister of Transportation and Communications, Haiti) will speak.
elerner | April 14, 2010At last summer's Summit of the Americas, President Obama announced the formation of a multinational organization aimed at increasing renewable energy usage, confronting climate change, and promoting tech transfer and sustainability practices amongst its members.
The Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas is holding its first ministerial in DC tomorrow and Friday, and The Inter-American Development Bank is hosting a live webcast of it, which you can watch here.
The event starts tomorrow at 8:30am Eastern, with Energy Secretary Stephen Chu speaking at 8:50. Hillary Clinton will also…
emjohnson | April 13, 2010Yesterday Kiera Butler, associate editor at Mother Jones, posted an article claiming that soy-based veggie burgers and infant formula are "made with the chemical hexane, an EPA-registered air pollutant and neurotoxin." She based her conclusions on a report put out by The Cornucopia Institute, an organization committed to "ecological principles and economic wisdom underlying sustainable and organic agriculture."
If you've heard about hexane before, it was likely in the context of gasoline--the air pollutant is also a byproduct of gas refining. But in 2007, grain processors were responsible…
grrlscientist | April 8, 2010tags: global warming, climate change, comedy, humor, funny, satire, weird, fucking hilarious, Science Catfight, Climatologists versus Meteorologists, Stephen Colbert, Colbert Report, streaming video
"In an alarming trend, temperatures this spring have risen. Consider this: on February 6, it was ten degrees. Today it hit almost 80. At this rate, by August, it will be 220 degrees!" declares Stephen Colbert. "So clearly folks, the climate debate rages on. Which is great because I like debate, and I love rage."
www.colbertnation.com
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Political Humor
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clock | April 7, 2010Our April Science Café (description below) will be held on Tuesday 4/20 at the Irregardless Cafe on Morgan Street. Our café speaker for that night is Rogelio Sullivan, Associate Director of the Advanced Transportation Energy Center and also of the Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center (FREEDM) at NCSU. Come and learn how our country is dealing with our ever-increasing energy consumption, and of ways that we may be able to reduce our dependence on foreign oil using a combination of innovative alternative energy cars and changes in our daily transportation…
scientificactivist | April 6, 2010Oh boy, it was a real scorcher in our nation's capital today... at least by April standards! With temperatures in some locales surpassing 90 degrees, several area daily high temperature records were broken.
As I sweated through the day, I got to thinking: where are all of those oh-so-clever political cartoonists and global-warming-denying Republican politicians who just a couple of months ago were incessantly using February's record-breaking snows to "mock" the idea of global warming?
(Bueller...? Bueller...? Bueller...?)
The fact is that this is largely an irrelevant*** question (well,…
clock | April 6, 2010At World Science - listen to the podcast and join the online discussion:
Our guest in this Science Forum is economist Scott Barrett of Columbia University's Earth Institute. Chat with Barrett about the science and politics of geoengineering, the emerging field of science aimed at cooling the planet.
Barrett is an expert on international environmental agreements. He is currently studying the politics and economics of geoengineering. He says countries are more likely to geoengineer climate than reduce their carbon emissions. Read his paper on The Incredible Economics of Geoengineering.
Barrett…
clock | April 6, 2010From Duke: Bonobo Rescue Leader to Headline Primate Palooza:
DURHAM, N.C. -- Internationally renowned conservationist Claudine André will visit Duke University April 14-18 as part of the "Primate Palooza," an effort to raise awareness for our primate relatives.
André founded and runs the world's only sanctuary and release program for orphaned bonobos in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Bonobos, like chimpanzees, are our closest living relative and are highly endangered. However, unlike chimpanzees and humans, bonobos are the only ape that has found a way to maintain peace in their groups.…
grrlscientist | April 4, 2010tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My piles of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
~ Arnold Lobel [1933-1987] author of many popular children's books.
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited…
gregladen | April 1, 2010Various environmental organizations have been using imagery of dead baby birds with toothbrushes in their guts and solid floating masses of garbage to describe and raise alarm about what has become known as the North Pacific Central Garbage Patch. Yet, the small but important amount of research that has been done there shows that the NPCGP consists of many (alarmingly many) pieces of plastic that are very small, the largest being "about the size of the fingernail on your pinkey."
Albatross may or may not be affected by garbage, but it is not likely that the garbage shown in the guts of…
mikethemadbiologist | April 1, 2010When I'm not fighting the forces of evil or calling idiots who desperately need my help fucking morons, I'm doing various genomics-related things. One of the things I'm involved with is a project to sequence a bunch of commensal (not associated with disease) E. coli. When most people think of the genus Escherichia, they think of a single species, E. coli. But a recent paper describes five new lineages (clades) of Escherichia that, while found mostly in the environment, are also found in humans (and, yes, we're sequencing ten of these). Here's how they're related to each other:
UPMGA…
pharyngula | March 31, 2010That recent episode in which hackers broke into computers at East Anglia University and extracted private email from climate researchers was the subject of much triumphal rejoicing by the climate change deniers. The UK set a parliamentary Science and Technology Committee to review the affair and see if there was any substance to the claims of the denialists, and the report of the inquiry has been released.
On the much cited phrases in the leaked e-mails—"trick" and "hiding the decline"—the Committee considers that they were colloquial terms used in private e-mails and the balance of evidence…
grrlscientist | March 30, 2010tags: Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Sonnenuntergang, travel, nature, environment, photography
Sonnenuntergang.
Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Image: Bob O'Hara, 30 March 2010 [larger view]
This was the sunset as photographed from the windows of the flat where I live in Frankfurt am Main. Don't you wish you could be here too, drinking a nice syrah and eating some of the Karotten-ingwer Suppe that I am preparing at this very moment?
grrlscientist | March 29, 2010tags: Max-Planck Institut für Biophysik, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Rote Tulpe mit gelbem Auge, flowers, nature, environment, image of the day
Rote Tulpe mit gelbem Auge.
Max-Planck Institut für Biophysik, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Image: GrrlScientist, 25 March 2010 [larger view]
Here's one photograph of the red-and-yellow tulips I saw at the Max-Planck Institute a few days ago. Unfortunately, the weather has not cooperated since, so even though I've photographed these flowers daily since then, none of those images captured what I wish to show to you. But this photograph isn't too…
grrlscientist | March 28, 2010tags: Nordwestzentrum, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Gelbe Wolken, flowers, nature, environment, image of the day
Gelbe Wolken.
Nordwestzentrum Open Air Market, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Image: GrrlScientist, 3 March 2010 [larger view]
When I saw these brilliant lemon yellow flowers, I was immediately captivated. I took half a dozen photographs, trying to capture the fluffiness and the brilliant yellow color of the flowers and contrast that against the dark background as well as the sharp edges of the green leaves. I don't think I succeeded at this, but this is still a nice image to look…
grrlscientist | March 28, 2010tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My piles of books are a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
~ Arnold Lobel [1933-1987] author of many popular children's books.
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited…