environment
grrlscientist | May 3, 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 | May 2, 2009Introducing The Clade. It has now been launched and you can read all about it and see the first contributions (and perhaps decide to join in and contribute yourself):
The Clade will bring together environmentally concerned writers, artists, photographers, videographers and podcasters who want to go beyond "environmentalism as usual." Environmentalism encompasses wilderness protection and human social justice, women's rights and artistic freedom, online organizing and solitary contemplation. We intend to reclaim environmental journalism from the Hearsts and Knight-Ridders of the world, to open…
grrlscientist | May 1, 2009tags: HR669, pets, exotic animals, invasive species, pet animal trade, pet parrots, World Parrot Trust, politics
Those of you who are following the situation with HR669, the Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act [full text : free PDF] know this resolution survived its initial House subcommittee hearing and will be heard again on an as-yet unnannounced date. Even though I support the stated purpose of this resolution -- preventing invasive nonnative wildlife from being introduced into the United States -- this bill, as written, will not accomplish that goal. I have been communicating with…
sciencewoman | April 29, 2009Let me now sing the praises of NASA's Earth Observatory, a phenomenal web-based public education resource that is celebrating its 10th birthday today. Every day for the past decade, NASA has been uploading spectacular remote sensing images and astronaut photographs and accompanying them with clearly written, jargon-free but scientifically accurate explanations of the pictured phenomena. The Earth Observatory is one of my favorite web destinations, and I get their weekly email newsletter, and follow them on twitter. (Follow me!)
On numerous occasions, I've used Earth Observatory images to…
j7uy5 | April 29, 2009Well, maybe not Malthus, but Garrett Hardin and Paul Ehrlich -- the
1960's-era neomalthusian academicians -- have been right on the
money. There are hard limits to growth, and those limits are
upon
us. This is the contention of Charles A. S. Hall and John W.
Day,
Jr., two systems ecologists who have published a paper in American
Scientist.
The paper is still behind a pay wall at the publication site, but a PDF
copy can be obtained
href="http://www.esf.edu/efb/hall/2009-05Hall0327.pdf">from
Professor
Hall's web site. (HT:
href="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5330#more">EROI Guy…
grrlscientist | April 27, 2009tags: Save Our Boreal Birds, online petition, birds, conservation, environment
Palm Warbler, Dendroica palmarum.
Image: Jeff Nadler [larger view].
Save the summer homes of Palm Warblers and other North American bird species that breed in Canada's Boreal forests!
The Boreal Songbird Initiative, along with other environmental groups like Bird Studies Canada, Nature Canada, the David Suzuki Foundation, and others created a petition called "Save our Boreal Birds" a little over a year ago. This petition will be sent to the Prime Minister of Canada and many provincial leaders throughout Canada,…
esiegel | April 27, 2009For over 100 million years, dinosaurs, and not mammals, were the dominant form of life on Earth. The pinnacle of evolution at the time, dinosaurs filled the niches of being the largest, most differentiated animals -- herbivores and carnivores both -- on the planet. As you well know from seeing their fossils, they would dwarf their modern, mammalian counterparts if they were still alive today.
But they're not still alive today, because a mass extinction event occurred 65 million years ago. And the fossil record indicates that it occurred all at once, which is unusual. The Earth was overrun…
grrlscientist | April 26, 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…
jstemwedel | April 24, 2009As captured in SprogCast #7, the Free-Ride offspring consider Mike Dunford's Earth Day resolutions meme. We discover that a kid's sense of scale is kind of different from a grown-up's.
You can grab the mp3 here. The approximate transcript of the conversation follows.
Dr. Free-Ride: I think I told you guys that we were going to talk again on something Earth Day-related, even though Earth Day was back on Wednesday.
Elder offspring: Yeah ...
Younger offspring: But we already talked about Earth Day!
Dr. Free-Ride: Sure, but I said we were going to do more. First of all, do you guys know what…
esiegel | April 24, 2009As many of you have heard, the Earth has been getting warmer, rapidly, since the industrial revolution. And as many of you have also heard, there is, historically, a link between greenhouse gases and temperature here on the Earth.
So, with Earth Day just behind us, I thought of a little analogy for the one question I hear more than any other about global warming:
How could something as small as a human being affect the climate/temperature of the entire Earth?
The analogy is good old-fashioned water torture. What harm can one drop of water do to you? Pretty much nothing, of course. But what…
scientificactivist | April 24, 2009Earlier I published a post about an interesting article by Andrew Revkin in today's New York Times about industry's willful ignorance of global warming science. There was an interesting quote in there that I didn't mention earlier about how journalistic practices enabled this campaign of misinformation:
George Monbiot, a British environmental activist and writer, said that by promoting doubt, industry had taken advantage of news media norms requiring neutral coverage of issues, just as the tobacco industry once had.
Will Bunch of Attytood already has some good commentary about this quote as…
scientificactivist | April 24, 2009The idea stated in the title of this blog post is not novel--far from it, in fact. We have known for a long time that the auto industry, the oil industry, and others with a vested interest have engaged in a long-running campaign of misinformation to discredit the science behind global warming. Manufacturing doubt is a common strategy employed by those whose agenda falls on the wrong side of scientific fact. This includes creationists, pseudoscientists, global warming denialists, HIV denialists, and, very notably, the tobacco industry's notorious decades-long campaign to deny the link between…
grrlscientist | April 24, 2009tags: earth day, green living, environmentally-friendly offices, work space, streaming video
This video offers advice on how to be green at work by suggesting a few easy changes that you and your co-workers can make to save the environment [2:02]
grrlscientist | April 23, 2009tags: HR669, pets, exotic animals, invasive species, politics
Let's watch the legislative process in action: Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife Legislative Hearing on H.R. 669. [Archived Video].
Will anyone add this hearing footage to YouTube? For some mysterious reason, I cannot view it on my laptop and cannot find it on YouTube yet, either.
A brief synopsis of the Subcommittee Hearing:
The Subcommittee hearing was the first step for this bill. Chair Bordallo repeatedly stated that the committee members were there to learn and get input. When the meeting was adjorned,…
sciencewoman | April 22, 2009Alice and I have been talking about the big and small ways that universities could act to improve the environment, but Earth Day is also about making personal changes to lessen your environmental impact.
So it's fitting that Mike Dunford has issued us an Earth Day challenge:
I'd like you to take a minute or two to come up with three things that you can do to be more environmentally friendly. The first should be something that's small, and easy to do. The second should be more ambitious - something you'll try to do, but might not manage to pull off. The third should be something you can do to…
jstemwedel | April 22, 2009
The Urban Homestead: Your guide to self-sufficient living in the heart of the city.
by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen
Port Townsend, WA: Process Media
2008
In honor of Earth Day, here's a brief review of a fascinating book about making your lifestyle more sustainable. While some friends of the blog jokingly refer to this as "that hipster survivalist book," The Urban Homestead is not a book about how to be a green poseur. Rather, it is a book that breaks down various elements of living greener and lays out a variety of strategies -- some easy and some ambitious -- to make it happen
Included…
pharyngula | April 22, 2009Scienceblogs has a new addition to the stable, and appropriately enough, it's an environmental science blog: say howdy to Guilty Planet.
skookumchick | April 22, 2009Today for me consisted of one PhD defense (I was on the committee; it was successfully defended, congrats Dr. Ken!), a meeting about ADVANCE, 2 hrs of class, another PhD meeting that I'm on the committee of, and then a bunch of following up with folks. So it's been pretty packed, as usual. (Tomorrow looks quite humane in contrast!)
But I didn't want to let today slip by without acknowledging that it is Earth Day. I thought about titling this post "Happy Earth Day!" but it really isn't, is it? The earth is in a mess, global warming is terrifying, and so is the general apathy towards global…
grrlscientist | April 22, 2009tags: Earth Day, earth-friendly resolutions, meme, environment, nature
Mike at Questionable Authority has started a new meme in honor of Earth Day, listing our Earth Day Resolutions. Even though he's being a big dork by not tagging me with this meme, I have decided to contribute anyway. (I have to live up to my "pushy New Yorker" description since I am a Seattle transplant with something to prove.) Because I live in an apartment in Manhattan and my backyard consists solely of a shaded fire escape that is four floors above a concrete sidewalk, I thought my resolutions might be interesting…