environment
grrlscientist | October 11, 2009tags: 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…
clock | October 9, 2009Yesterday, North Carolinians woke up to some very unpleasant news that Dell decided to close its computer manufacturing plant in Winston-Salem, Forsyth Co, NC by the end of this year and lay off its entire workforce of 905 employees.
While I may not like it, I can understand the economics of shutting down a textile mill or a furniture plant. It's a new world we are living in. But Dell? Computers?! If the leading computer manufacturer is suffering during the recession, what can anyone else hope for? Is there any industry that can still compete and grow?
And it seems that the answer may,…
j7uy5 | October 5, 2009This is an odd one. A study of 5191 adults showed an
association between air pollution and attacks of acute appendicitis.
href="http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/abstract/cmaj.082068v1">Effect
of ambient air pollution on the incidence of appendicitis
CMAJ 10.1503/cmaj.082068
Published online ahead of print October 5, 2009
Abstract
Background: The pathogenesis of appendicitis is
unclear. We evaluated whether exposure to air pollution was associated
with an increased incidence of appendicitis.
Methods: We identified 5191 adults who had been
admitted to hospital with…
grrlscientist | October 4, 2009tags: 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…
khannula | September 30, 2009There's an issue of Eos sitting on my desk at work with a front-page article about how to manage outreach. Earth scientists know stuff that's important - this week's huge earthquakes (covered all over the geoblogosphere) are just one example. Water's another. And climate. And volcanoes. And landslides. And... well, you get the picture. So outreach is important.
But the best outreach might be the stuff that goes on every day in schools. My kid's lucky - he lives in a college town, with all sorts of students and professors providing opportunities to learn cool stuff. But a lot of kids don't…
esiegel | September 29, 2009As many of you know, light pollution at night has become a big problem. It's a problem for flora and fauna, which rely on the "day/night" cycle that they've adapted to over billions of years, and it's a problem for astronomers, as the light pollution disrupts observations of the night sky. All over the world, light pollution is visible to anyone looking at the Earth, even from space.
But I've been watching a little bit of Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno, which is a series of entertaining, educational shorts about threatened species and the environmental consequences of eating them.
But…
razib | September 28, 2009From Science, Plenty of Cows but Little Profit:
Three years ago, a technological breakthrough gave dairy farmers the chance to bend a basic rule of nature: no longer would their cows have to give birth to equal numbers of female and male offspring. Instead, using a high-technology method to sort the sperm of dairy bulls, they could produce mostly female calves to be raised into profitable milk producers.
Now the first cows bred with that technology, tens of thousands of them, are entering milking herds across the country -- and the timing could hardly be worse.
The dairy industry is in crisis…
jstemwedel | September 28, 2009GrrlScientist is in a contest to become Quark Expedition's official blogger from Antarctica. (So is DN Lee from Urban Science Adventures.)
Grrl has been doing pretty well getting votes in this contest, despite the fact that her competition includes a radio personality from Portugal and a member of the Osmond family.
Of the top vote-getters, it is clear to me that Grrl would do the best job with the specified task (blogging from, and about, Antarctica). She has a personal and professional interest in nature, science, the environment, and conservation. She has a history of writing pieces…
razib | September 28, 2009
Darren Naish has the full story. In a bygone age without scientists who...know stuff, these sorts of finds would become the germ of myth. As it is we cobble together a bunch of banal facts and likelihoods into something far less exciting, but more likely to b a true description of reality.
pharyngula | September 28, 2009Hooray for us! We got a nice plug in the Minneapolis Star Tribune for my campus's conservation efforts, and for the opportunities to major in environmental studies here. Come on, students and parents of students, trust me, this is a good place for the environmentally conscious.
gregladen | September 28, 2009We have had a cool summer here in Minnesota, and this has brought out the miscreants who for their own reasons do not want to get on board with the simple, well demonstrated scientific fact that global temperatures have risen, that we humans are the primary cause, and that this climate change has negative consequences.
There are probably different reasons people do not want to get on board with this reality. The main reason especially for younger individuals is that they have been told by their political mentors to not accept global warming. The political mentors, in turn, reject global…
grrlscientist | September 27, 2009tags: 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…
grrlscientist | September 25, 2009tags: Earth Overshoot Day, environment, education
[larger view]
Today is Earth Overshoot Day. This is the day when humanity will begin placing more demands on the planet's resources -- from filtering CO2 to producing food, fiber and timber -- than the planet can provide in this year. From this day forward until the end of the year, people will meet our demand for ecological services by depleting resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The global economic crash has one positive thing to recommend it: according to the Global Footprint Network, our use of world…
bcohen | September 25, 2009Instead of me answering that, I wondered instead how other people have argued about the question. To be more specific, since I am interested in the role of scientific practice for defining the land, I wondered how people argued about whether or not science was better for agriculture. I wrote a book about it. It's called Notes from the Ground: Science, Soil, and Society in the American Countryside. I commented here a few months ago that the book was finally on its way. Although Amazon sales do not begin until October 20th (here is their link), the publisher has it officially listed for…
emjohnson | September 20, 2009In fitting in with the recent sightings of conspiracy minded Stormtroopers here at ScienceBlogs I thought I would add my own contribution to the remix. Here Derrick Jensen tells the story of the little known early version of the film before it was optioned to an unknown director named George Lucas (starts off slow, but give it 30 seconds).
To read more by Jensen see his piece in Orion Magazine.
grrlscientist | September 20, 2009tags: 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…
grrlscientist | September 17, 2009tags: Planet Earth, nature, animals, BBC, television, streaming video
Martha Holmes, series producer of BBC Earth programs discusses the importance of preserving the planet, along with comments from her colleagues, Neil Nightingale and Dale Templar. This amazing series will air this Sunday, 20 September, from 300-800pm. Yes, I am jealous beyond words of all you people who have televisions.
grrlscientist | September 16, 2009tags: Planet Earth, nature, animals, BBC, television, streaming video
Neil Nightingale, Head of the BBC Natural History Unit, discusses the impact and variety of BBC Earth expeditions, as well as the passion of the crew members. Martha Holmes and Brian Leith, share their thoughts on these subjects as well. This amazing series will air this Sunday, 20 September, from 300-800pm. Yes, I am jealous beyond words of all you people who have televisions.
pharyngula | September 14, 2009We just have to make the practice of sky burial popular! Maybe this photo set of a Tibetan funeral will help. (WARNING! Those photos show a large flock of vultures stripping a human body of flesh, with the assistance of some helpful Tibetans who break up the larger bones with hatchets. Don't click on the link if you are at all squeamish.)
Boy, those are some happy vultures. I think I'd like to bring a little joy into the life a few carrion-feeders after I die, too.
Ooops, another warning: I'd looked at it with an adblocker, so I hadn't noticed the very in-your-face porn ads on the page, so…
grrlscientist | September 13, 2009tags: conservation, environmentalism, global warming, ocean acidification, AMNH, American Museum of Natural History, New York City, A Sea Change, film premier
Image: A Sea Change [larger view].
Can you imagine oceans that have been emptied of all fish? What would life be like for other life forms on this planet if there really were no more fish in the sea? This is not science fiction: human-caused ocean acidification is already making its effects known. Sometimes known as the "wet underbelly" or "evil twin" of climate change, ocean acidification is caused by excess carbon dioxide from…