environment
grrlscientist | April 5, 2009tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
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 enjoyment. Below the fold is this week's issue of The Birdbooker Report which…
skookumchick | April 3, 2009So every university has some kind of publication it uses to connect with alumni to say, "Look at all this cool stuff we're doing, don't you want to give us money in memory of the cool stuff we did when you were here?" My alma mater keeps sending me such publications; I'm starting to find the publications that Purdue puts out for similar purposes.
However. This seems to be actually a pretty cool thing: Purdue Engineering has a magazine called Engineering Impact, where, while we could make jokes about making bombs hit their target better, they are instead using impact to point out engineers…
amillikan | April 2, 2009In an article in The New York Times Magazine Sunday, Freeman Dyson—best known for his work in theoretical physics—discussed his belief that climate change is an issue that should be approached with skepticism. ScienceBloggers responded with thoughtful consideration. Dyson stated in the Times piece that while prevailing dogmas about climate change may be right, they deserve to be challenged. "That they do," conceded ScienceBlogger James Hrynyshyn from The Island of Doubt. "My only quibble is they are best challenged by those with a good grasp of the latest findings."
scientificactivist | April 2, 2009After writing a global warming denialist piece for his Washington Post column back in February that was totally eviscerated for running roughshod over anything actually resembling the truth, it looks like George Will is at it again. Fortunately, Carl Zimmer is already on the case:
Today, George Will is back on the subject of global warming. The occassion for his column is the alleged uselessness of energy-efficient light bulbs. The column is basically a cut-and-paste job on a recent New York Times article on the bulbs-the same newspaper that Will claimed in an earlier column is "a trumpet…
grrlscientist | March 31, 2009tags: doorway, Suomenlinna, Helsinki, Finland, image of the day
Porttikäytävä, 2
Photographed on Suomenlinna on Kalevalapaäivä (Kalevala Day).
This is one of my favorite places to visit in Helsinki, Finland.
Image: GrrlScientist, 28 February 2009 [larger view].
sciencepunk | March 30, 2009I keep thinking I should write more worthy articles, but then, I keep finding fantastic things that don't need 800 words of discussion getting in the way. This is one of the latter, and comes courtesy of George Kourounis, ballsy explorer and general badass.
Kourounis took a trip to Indonesia's Kawah Ijen volcano, where miners earn $10 a day for journeying into the depths of a volcano to retrieve sulphur. Here is the site of the world's largest lake of sulphuric acid:
Here is an aluminium can dissolving in the extreme acid (pH ~0.5!):
And here is Kourounis, going for a leisurely paddle…
revere | March 30, 2009A little over a week ago the Environmental Protection Agency sent the White House its finding that global warming endangers public health and welfare. This doesn't sound like news, and except for a minority of scientists out there it is very, very old news. But in the context of a 2007 Supreme Court ruling it is indeed big news:
The proposal -- which comes in response to a 2007 Supreme Court decision ordering EPA to consider whether carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases should be regulated under the Clean Air Act -- could lay the groundwork for nationwide measures to limit such emissions…
pharyngula | March 29, 2009You have to watch this loon making his case for how harmless global warming is in testimony with Lord Christopher Monckton (thanks, England…really, we have enough wacky ideologues without you sending yours over here). Monckton dismisses the problem of CO2 by claiming that CO2 levels were much higher in the pre-Cambrian, and that the stuff is just "plant food".
It's plant food ... So if we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere? ... So all our good intentions could be for naught. In fact, we could be doing just the opposite of what the people…
grrlscientist | March 29, 2009tags: Suomenlinna, Helsinki, Finland, image of the day
Photographed on Suomenlinna on Kalevalapaäivä (Kalevala Day).
This is one of my favorite places to visit in Helsinki, Finland.
Image: GrrlScientist, 28 February 2009 [larger view].
grrlscientist | March 29, 2009tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
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 enjoyment. Below the fold is this week's issue of The Birdbooker Report which…
revere | March 28, 2009When my mother died last year at the age of 103 it ended a life that went from the Wright Brothers first flight through to the internet. That's a lot of change to accommodate, but she did it pretty well, although there were things she could not get used to. One of the things that was hardest for her to get used to was the prices of particular things, of which long distance telephone calls was an example. Long past the time when such calls had become ridiculously cheap, she was always nervous about talking "long distance." I'll grant you it's sometimes hard to adjust, always comparing things…
sb admin | March 25, 2009The question of whether or not I am a geologist is not just an amusing exercise in academic politics. In Washington, as in most U.S. states, geology is a regulated profession; guidelines for who can and cannot call themselves a geologist in a professional context are laid out in the administrative code and enforced by the Geologist Licensing Board.
I am not a geologist, nor will I become one any time soon. To comply with Washington law, I would need to complete coursework in the core subjects of geology (as specified in WAC 308-15-040: structural geology, mineralogy, petrology and sedimentary…
clock | March 23, 2009From NC Sea Grant:
....At nearly every fisheries management meeting he attends, Baker hears the same complaint: North Carolina's recreational fishermen don't have to account for their catch. Two years ago, during a regional meeting about snapper and grouper, Baker looked down at his hands and finally saw a possible answer: his mobile phone.
"I wondered if you could send a text message to a computer database somewhere instead of just texting from phone to phone," he says. "And if you could do that, maybe that was something recreational fishermen could do to track their catches and fishing…
sciencepunk | March 23, 2009
Last week the Independent newspaper reported on the case of Tim Nicholson, a UK executive claiming religious discrimination after losing his job because of his beliefs on climate change. Nicholson had been head of sustainability at Grainger plc, a residential property investment company, but claims his attempts at implementing environmental and corporate social responsibility policies were blocked by fellow executives.
This case is noteworthy because it reveals several things - that someone could be fired for doing their job too enthusiastically, that Grainger plc possesses an asinine…
amillikan | March 22, 2009Jane Lubchenco and John Holdren were confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate Thursday night after being stalled since March 3, when their nominations were blocked by anonymous holds in the Senate for unrelated reasons. Lubchenco will serve as the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and John Holdren will take on the role of Science Adviser to President Obama. Throughout the ordeal, ScienceBlogger Mike Dunford was unrelenting in his efforts to bring this issue to the public's attention, contacting Capitol Hill to investigate the situation, reporting his…
gregladen | March 22, 2009There has always been Oxygen on the earth, but it was not floating around free in the atmosphere as it is today (most of it still isn't). Indeed, it is kind of strange that the earth is blanketed in a mixture of toxic, corrosive liquid (water) and equally corrosive gas (the oxygen in the atmosphere). Imagine showing up at a planet without an atmosphere or liquid water, and splashing the water and spraying the air from he earth all over that planet. Depending on the planet, it could be like throwing vinegar into a bowl of baking soda. Third grade science fair time!
In fact, this could…
grrlscientist | March 20, 2009tags: The State of the Birds 2009, ornithology, birds, endangered species, conservation, global warming, climate change, environment, invasive species, habitat loss
Streaming video [6:31]
According to the most comprehensive report ever published in the USA, nearly one third of America's 800 native bird species are endangered, threatened, or in significant decline, thanks to habitat loss, pollution, climate change, competition from invasive species and other threats.
The shocking report, published by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, reveals that of the more than 800 bird species that…
sb admin | March 19, 2009On Monday, airline passengers were the first to observe the eruption of the just-barely-above-the-water volcano that forms the islands of Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha'apai, in Tonga. Three days later, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake occurred on the Tonga trench.
Was the timing of these two events just coincidence?
Yes.
Why do I think the events were unrelated? Well:
Earthquakes happen all the time. Thankfully for Tongan residents, I am using a geological definition of "time" here, but still: A major earthquake on a major plate boundary does not require any special explanation.
The earthquake was a…
revere | March 19, 2009Papers on biodiversity are not my regular science reading fare and the reason I found my self reading the article "Initial community evenness favours functionality under selective stress" by Wittebolle et al. in Nature from last week isn't very important. But I did find myself reading about the "biodiversity-stability relationship" in a microbial ecosystem, so rather than let all that effort go to waste I decided to write about it here. Like most things that wind up on this page, there is an extra little twist at the end, this time where I come out against biodiversity, but to get there you'…
grrlscientist | March 16, 2009tags: windmills, windpower, bird-friendly windpower, conservation, environment, streaming video
Here's an intriguing video describing affordable and bird-friendly windmills that are competitive with more traditional windmills, and are designed to be used in urban and suburban areas as well as out in the countryside [2:02]