environment
mikethemadbiologist | March 9, 2010Florida Governor Charlie Crist has been trying to run as a moderate in his re-election campaign (he's even toyed with running as an independent). He is to the left of the Republican Party on several issues: if nothing else, he thinks the stimulus was a good idea. He's also more gay-tolerant than the GOP as a whole. But Monday, The New York Times ran a story detailing how Crist really screwed up the Everglades restoration project by giving sweetheart deals to sugar cane growers. Said one critic:
"To replace projects that were under way for a possibility of a project decades from now is…
grrlscientist | March 9, 2010tags: PalmenGarten, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, flower porn, nature, environment, image of the day
Palmwedel.
PalmenGarten, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Image: GrrlScientist, 24 February 2010 [larger view]
grrlscientist | March 8, 2010tags: PalmenGarten, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, flower porn, nature, environment, image of the day
Daffodil
PalmenGarten, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Image: GrrlScientist, 24 February 2010 [larger view]
grrlscientist | March 8, 2010tags: education, public outreach, BirdNote Radio Program, Bird Note, birding, Bird Watching, birds, nature, environment, conservation, NPR, National Public Radio, Seattle Audubon Society, mp3
Are you trapped on a crowded subway or in a traffic jam of honking, stinking cars? If so, you might be interested to know that you can transport yourself to a different world, a cool green space where you can feel the earth breathe in time to the music of birds. Your personal vehicle is BirdNote, a 2-minute radio program about birds and nature.
"We want to help people connect to the natural world and…
pharyngula | March 8, 2010I got so sick of dreary beancounting communications 'experts' telling me that we need to avoid fighting creationists … because the magical drone of framing was going to make everyone happy and persuade the jebus-loving ignoramuses that evolution was good. There are signs that these parasites are moving on now — to climate science.
Oh, great. Here's a potentially greater material problem for us than even the sad state of science education, and now the good-haired knob-polishers are moving in to dispense their advice of indolence and tone. Dot Earth has an exchange between Matt Nisbet and Randy…
grrlscientist | March 7, 2010tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of
barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird
literature."
--Edgar Kincaid
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 by me and published here for your information and…
jstemwedel | March 6, 2010Which has a larger carbon footprint:
An office that uses a photocopier or an office that uses carbon paper?
How much difference does it make if you're using the carbon paper in an electric typewriter as opposed to a manual one?
How much less is the environmental impact from being able to proofread on the screen before printing out and making your copies (which I'm assuming is itself lower impact than printing multiple copies ... but maybe I'm wrong)?
How do we pin down the relevant impacts of the manufacture of the computer and printer and photocopier compared to those of the manufacture of…
grrlscientist | March 6, 2010tags: PalmenGarten, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, flower porn, nature, environment, image of the day
Flower Porn 2
PalmenGarten, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Image: GrrlScientist, 24 February 2010 [larger view]
grrlscientist | March 5, 2010tags: PalmenGarten, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, flower porn, nature, environment, image of the day
Flower Porn
PalmenGarten, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Image: GrrlScientist, 24 February 2010 [larger view]
clock | March 4, 2010From the NC Museum of Life Sciences:
Program Type: Science Talk
Date: Mar. 9, 7 pm - Mar. 9, 8 pm
Location: Museum of Natural Sciences - Auditorium
Fee: $6 General Public, $4 Members, $3 Students
The Ecological and Economic Importance of Sharks, Threats They Face, and How You Can Help
Lecture, slide show & video presentation by marine biologist David Shiffman
David Shiffman and friendShiffman graduated with distinction in Biology from Duke and is now a Masters in Marine Biology candidate at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. His research focuses on the feeding behavior and…
mikethemadbiologist | March 2, 2010Juan Cole, who has himself been a target of political campaigns regarding Middle East foreign policy, lays out why climatologists haven't been as successful as they could be in persuading the public (hint: It's not framing). First:
Very, very wealthy and powerful interests are lobbying the big media companies behind the scenes to push climate change skepticism, or in some cases (as with Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp/ Fox Cable News) the powerful and wealthy interests actually own the media.
Reason number two:
Powerful politicians linked to those wealthy interests are shilling for them, and…
grrlscientist | March 1, 2010tags: Wailea, Maui, Hawaii, tsunami, nature, environment, image of the day
Image: Ron Barranco, Wailea, Maui, Hawaii [larger view]
One of my friends lived on Hawaii in 2008, where his uncle still resides. His uncle emailed two images to my friend the morning after the tsunami, which were snapped from his lanai. My friend shared these images with his friends, and he also gave me permission to share them here with all of you.
Image: Ron Barranco, Wailea, Maui, Hawaii [larger view]
grrlscientist | February 28, 2010tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of
barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird
literature."
--Edgar Kincaid
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 by me and published here for your information and…
pharyngula | February 27, 2010The denialists are at it again in the comments, parroting the latest lie.
UEA CRU's Dr Phil Jones agrees there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995.
Wow. You'd think they'd realize that twisting the words of a scientist around 180° from what they actually said is a very bad strategy — it would be like trying to claim that I'd decided evolution was false. This is no exception. Deltoid has a wonderfully clear quote:
This led to a Daily Mail headline reading: "Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995."…
pharyngula | February 27, 2010The country was hit hard with some loss of life, but so far seems to be handling it well — this is nothing like the Haiti disaster. Countries on the Pacific shore need to brace themselves for tsunamis. NOAA has published estimated arrival times. And just look at this amazing map of where the energy from this quake is going:
pharyngula | February 25, 2010The South Dakota senate has been wrestling over an important resolution, HCR 1009. Here's the original text. It will look rather familiar to anyone who has seen creationist bills roll through a legislature.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the House of Representatives of the Eighty-fifth Legislature of the State of South Dakota, the Senate concurring therein, that the South Dakota Legislature urges that instruction in the public schools relating to global warming include the following:
(1) That global warming is a scientific theory rather than a proven fact;
(2) That there are a variety of…
razib | February 24, 2010Arboreality has allowed for the evolution of increased longevity in mammals:
The evolutionary theory of aging predicts that species will experience delayed senescence and increased longevity when rates of extrinsic mortality are reduced. It has long been recognized that birds and bats are characterized by lower rates of extrinsic mortality and greater longevities than nonvolant endotherms, presumably because flight reduces exposure to terrestrial predators, disease, and environmental hazards. Like flight, arboreality may act to reduce extrinsic mortality, delay senescence, and increase…
revere | February 23, 2010Still working on the grant and today was our Mock Study Section. It was an experiment that in the view of all participants (there were about 35 reviewers in the room) was a highly successful one. But after hearing the litany of strengths and weaknesses I'm worn out. I naturally focussed on the weaknesses. We have over a month to fix things but the image of the ship going down swam before my eyes, even when surfing for blog fodder:
In October 2009 the government of Italy announced that a wreck discovered off the southwestern tip of the country is the Catania, a passenger vessel sunk during…
pharyngula | February 22, 2010Bjorn Lomborg, the "skeptical environmentalist," has always bugged me as a rather shady character. Now Howard Friel started fact-checking Lomborg's footnotes, and found them to be wanting.
But when Friel began checking Lomborg's sources, "I found problems," he says. "As an experiment, I looked up one of his footnotes, found that it didn't support what he said, and then did another, and kept going, finding the same pattern." He therefore took on the Augean stables undertaking of checking every one of the hundreds of citations in Cool It. Friel's conclusion, as per his book's title, is that…
grrlscientist | February 21, 2010tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of
barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird
literature."
--Edgar Kincaid
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 by me and published here for your information and…