environment
khannula | July 8, 2009Five students (three from the US, two from Brazil) were arrested last month while doing paleoclimate research in Brazil. They were collecting sediment cores from lakes and wetlands, in order to understand past climate change in western Brazil. The charges were based on Brazilian laws dealing with unauthorized extraction of mineral resources. (The group had research permits which they believed to be valid, but apparently they did not cover all members of the group.) The students have been released on bail, but the American students have to stay in Brazil until the legal process is complete -…
emjohnson | July 7, 2009
"It seems really very unfair that man should have chosen the gorilla to symbolize everything that is aggressive and violent, when that is one thing that gorillas are not, and that we are."- Sir Richard Attenborough
This quote sets the tone for a new award winning short film (see below) from the non-profit organization Explore. Primates, and great apes in particular, have long fascinated and repulsed us based on their uncanny resemblance. In order to deflect this repulsion they have frequently been portrayed as monstrous, violent and expressing a host of bestial attributes. A case in point…
pharyngula | July 6, 2009
Don't tell Jerry, but aren't pictures of baby kitties a cheap way to get some eyeballs? At least it's a nice story about a few animals coming back to the wilderness.
grrlscientist | July 5, 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…
pharyngula | July 4, 2009Yesterday was my last day in Lindau, I'm sorry to say — it was also the day of the closing ceremonies on the island of Mainau, in case you were wondering why it was so quiet on the blog. I decided to leave all my electronical gear behind at the hotel and venture out for the last session with a stark naked brain.
The day began with a walk down to the harbor to board the Sonnenkönigin, a very impressive ship that can only be inadequately be called a ferry. We were welcomed aboard with a glass of wine or a glass of juice if you felt 8 am was a little early to begin, and tables heaped with food.…
esiegel | July 2, 2009Earlier this week, the most obvious scientific news in recent memory was reported: there's Uranium on the Moon.
This has been, pretty much, a slam-dunk since Apollo 11. Why? Because we've brought moonrocks back to Earth, and we've analyzed them thoroughly. What did we find? That they're made of the same stuff that Earth-rocks are made of!
I mean, not that that isn't interesting. None of the other rocky bodies in our Solar System have the same composition as Earth, which helped lead us to the understanding that the Moon was made out of the same stuff that made Earth. In fact, one of the…
edyong | July 2, 2009The island of Hirta, on the western coast of Scotland, is home to a special breed of sheep. Soay sheep, named after a neighbouring island, are the most primitive breed of domestic sheep and have lived on the isles of St Kilda for at least a millennium. They're generally smaller than the average domesticated sheep, and that difference is getting larger and larger. Over the last 20 years, the Soay sheep have started to shrink.
They are becoming gradually lighter at all ages such that today's lambs and adults weigh around 3kg less than those from 1986. Their hind legs have also shortened to a…
pharyngula | July 1, 2009I am in awe — they did it without anyone noticing. They just infiltrated nations all around the planet, smuggling in individuals to form vast new colonies of billions, all loyal to the overlords back home. Of course, these are very, very short Argentinians, which made them harder to notice: they're all ants.
In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the 'Californian large', extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast…
pharyngula | July 1, 2009This morning was a long session broken into two big chunks, and I'm afraid it was too much for me — my recent weird sleep patterns are catching up with me, which didn't help at all in staying alert.
Robert Huber: Intracellular protein degradation and its control
This talk was a disaster. Not because it wasn't good, because it was; lots of fine, detailed science on the regulation of proteases by various mechanisms, with a discussion of the structure and function of proteasomes, accompanied by beautiful mandalas of protein structure. No, the problem was that this listener's jet lag has been…
grrlscientist | July 1, 2009tags: Taco Bell, Onion News, humor, funny, satire, streaming video
In this ONN report, we learn that Taco Bell has a new menu: it boasts zero environmental impact because they will rely solely on synthetic, lab-produced ingredients. [2:21]
ejohnson | June 30, 2009
Last Tuesday, West Virginia State Police arrested NASA climate scientist James Hansen for trespassing on a Massey Energy-owned coal plant near the state's Coal River Valley. Thirty-one demonstrators--also including actress Daryl Hannah and former West Virginia Representative Ken Hechler--were apprehended while protesting the company's practice of mountaintop removal mining, which both perpetuates the use of coal as a source of fuel and devastates surrounding natural habitats. Hansen has long advocated against mountaintop removal, and criticized the Obama administration's recent pledge to…
ejohnson | June 30, 2009This book review was originally posted by GrrlScientist on Living the Scientific Life.
tags: book review, Sleeping Naked is Green, green living, environment, Vanessa Farquharson
Carbon footprints, global warming, green living -- are these phrases an inconvenient truth that keep you awake at night, wondering how you can live in a more environmentally friendly way? For many people, merely contemplating these things is enough to make them give up trying to help the earth before they even start! But before you allow yourself to become discouraged, there is a book out there that will inspire you…
pharyngula | June 30, 2009There are a few people who will now appear on the blog who will be extremely peevish about Molina's talk, because he simply clearly stated the scientific consensus. We are now living in the anthropocene, when so many people exist that that we are affecting the planet's functions. CO2 and CH4 concentrations have been changing rapidly in recent decades, along with changes in temperature, and the fact of the matter is that the changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere are causally connected to changes in temperature.
He showed long term records of 450,000 years of temperature and…
mikethemadbiologist | June 29, 2009Over the weekend, I had started writing a post titled "When Will [economist Paul] Krugman Have His Creationist Epiphany?" It was inspired by a comment left on a Krugman post about "the Great Ignorance which seems to have overtaken much of the economics profession -- the "rediscovery" of old fallacies about deficit spending and interest rates, presented as if they were deep insights, the bizarre arguments presented by economists with sterling reputations."
While Krugman argues this is due to flat-out ignorance, a commenter made a great point (italics mine):
This is a point I've kept making to…
grrlscientist | June 28, 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 | June 26, 2009tags: Antarctica, environment, nature, streaming video
As an introduction to my special plea to you, my readers, I want to share this astonishing time-lapse video filmed in Antarctica, in and around McMurdo Station and Scott Base [6:17]
Thanks to one of my readers, I learned recently that Quark Expeditions is searching for an Official Blogger to join a voyage to Antarctica. To select this person, they are asking blog writers to enter a competition where the public votes for whom they think would be best for the job. Quite honestly, I think I am the best person in the world to act as the…
grrlscientist | June 25, 2009tags: Biosphere 2, environment, biophilia, green living, Jane Poynter, TEDTalks, streaming video
In this video, Jane Poynter tells her story of living two years and 20 minutes in Biosphere 2 -- an experience that provoked her to explore how we might sustain life in the harshest of environments. This is the first TED talk drawn from an independently organized TEDx event, held at the University of Southern California. [15:54]
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 lives…
grrlscientist | June 21, 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…
ejohnson | June 18, 2009
As scientists often lament, science in the entertainment industry is often ignored or misportrayed outside the realm of science fiction. But two compelling new documentaries have ScienceBloggers hopeful that their messages will have the mass-market appeal of films such as An Inconvenient Truth or Fast Food Nation. The End of the Line, which Darren Naish calls "captivating, charismatic and beautifully filmed," investigates the alarming effects of overfishing and the exploitation of marine resources. Food Inc., co-produced by Fast Food Nation director Eric Schlosser, aims to expose the extent…
ejohnson | June 18, 2009
Last weekend, some ultra-powerful movers, shakers, and carvers of our planet caught ScienceBloggers' attentions. First, researchers debated the potential for Mt. Saint Helens to form a supervolcano, an extraordinarily large volcano with the potential to cause massive wildlife destruction and devastating impacts on climate. Bloggers also discussed two megafloods: one that permanently separated Great Britain from continental Europe, and another that firmly established the topography, soils, and agriculture of the Pacific Northwest. While the Pleistocene epoch may not have been the most…