environment
clock | March 16, 2009July 24, 2008 presentation by Stephen Schneider for the Stanford University Office of Science Outreach's Summer Science Lecture Series.
Professor Schneider discusses the local, regional, and international actions that are already beginning to address global warming and describe other actions that could be taken, if there were political will to substantially reduce the magnitude of the risks.
The Stanford Summer Science Lecture Series is a set of informal lectures about cutting edge research from four of Stanford's most esteemed professors.
thusspakezuska | March 15, 2009This past Friday morning, as per my usual routine, I sat down to read the Philadelphia Inquirer with my coffee and breakfast. And I came across an article that nearly made me vomit back all that delicious Toy Cow Farms blueberry yoghurt I had just spooned down. I refer, of course, to the piece on the "quaint Victorian home" shared by Darla, Chelsea, and Coco Puff.
Their dwelling has a cedar-shake roof, vaulted ceilings, and hardwood floors, heating and air-conditioning, moldings and casement windows, drapery with valences, and fanciful wallpapers.
At Christmas, music from the RCA Victor…
clock | March 14, 2009
Help scientists track plant and animal cycles:
The USA-National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) -- a University of Arizona, Tucson-based group of scientists and citizens that monitors the seasonal cycles of plants and animals -- is calling for volunteers to help track the effect of climate change on the environment.
The group is launching a national program encouraging citizen volunteers to observe seasonal changes among plants and animals, like flowering, migration and egg-laying. They can then log in and record their observations online at the USA-NPN website.
"The program is designed for…
clock | March 12, 2009Anne-Marie writes, in Hot Mommas Make Boys:
A study published in the latest edition of the Journal of Mammalogy reports the results of a 30 year study on a population of northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris), which shows that the male:female pup ratio is significantly higher in years with warmer sea surface temperature and weaker atmospheric pressure differentials.
What is the mechanism behind this? Unlike reptiles, which actually have their biological sex determined by temperature, the sex of mammalian embryos is entirely dependent on their chromosomes. This is where the…
clock | March 12, 2009From SCONC:
Tuesday, March 17
7 p.m.
"Hope, Hype and Communicating Climate Change" The Asheville SCONCs welcome nationally prominent science writer Rick Borchelt to speak on making climate change information intelligible to the lay public. This is the first in a series of three public education lectures on climate change to be held in April and June. Diana Wortham Theatre, Asheville.
Details Here (PDF) More Info: Pamela McCown, Education & Research Services, Inc. pamela@education-research-services.org
bioephemera | March 12, 2009
Here in DC, creative individuals appear to have revised Chevron ads in at least one Metro station to reflect a more, er, politically overt sentiment. The poster hack changes the promise "I will use less energy" in this ad (pdf) to "I will stop lobbying against climate legislation."
The digitally executed revision (which looks pretty convincing in person) follows in the footsteps of Berlin graffiti artists and others who use graphic hacks to subtly shift, reverse, or critique advertising in public places. The question is, how many people have noticed? (Keep your eyes open, DC residents!)
pharyngula | March 12, 2009This is a cool talk: Bill Gross talks about his efforts to tap into solar power. It's a little bit over-optimistic — how much of the desert Southwest would we have to pave over to collect enough energy for the country? — but the really fun part is where he talks about using unguided evolutionary processes to design solar collectors and heat engines. People who claim that chance and selection can't produce anything new have never tinkered with genetic algorithms.
pharyngula | March 12, 2009As part of his deplorable legacy, one of the last things George W. Bush rushed through in his last days of power was a set of changes in environmental policy that basically gutted protections for endangered organisms. Our new president has been given the power to undo those changes in a recent spending bill.
Obama may now, with the stroke of a pen, rescind the Bush Administration's last-minute rules that:
forcibly removed global warming from the list of extinction threats to the polar bear (despite scientific opinion that global warming is the bear's chief extinction threat)
allowed oil…
mikethemadbiologist | March 12, 2009Nicholas Kristof has an interesting op-ed in the NY Times about the relationship between pig farming and MRSA. I'll be curious to see what he writes about in his next column, since he says, "This is a system that may help breed virulent "superbugs" that pose a public health threat to us all. That'll be the focus of my next column, on Sunday."
I feel somewhat vindicated since this is a drum I've been beating for a long time; I've also been involved in efforts to curb the use of the antibiotic cefquinome in agriculture.
The other good thing is that ScienceBlogling Tara, who has published on…
revere | March 9, 2009I'm sure it will be years before we have cleaned up all the garbage -- literally and figuratively -- from the Bush administration's Environmental "Protection" Agency. The notoriously conservative DC Appeals Court, in a unanimous decision, did its part recently when it declared the Bush EPA's standards for air particulates “contrary to law and unsupported by adequately reasoned decisionmaking." The language doesn't get much stronger than that. Just a few days before the Supremes refused to hear a challenge to a lower court decision striking down Bush EPA mercury standards from coal-fired power…
clock | March 7, 2009Carnival of the Arid #2, the blog carnival about deserts, is up on Coyote Crossing.
Related to lack of water is, well, lack of water and how it affects people, leads to wars over water, etc. So for the World Water Day on March 22, the blogosphere will write about transboundary water. Send your entries to Daniel for this one-off carnival (or is this more properly called Synchroblogging?).
clock | March 6, 2009Those of you who have been following the science blogosphere for a while may remember that excellent old blog Down to Earth which, sadly, went dormant back in 2006.
I am happy to announce that Daniel Collins has now started a new blog, focused on water, hydrology and other All Things Wet, at Cr!key Creek (with the cool sub-heading: "Water cycle meet Media cycle"). One to check out and bookmark!
clock | March 6, 2009From SCONC:
Tuesday, March 10
7 p.m.
Science Cafe, Durham: Re-Kindling Wood Energy
Duke professor Dan Richter does his bit at "Periodic Tables," talking about Europe's new alternative fuel -- firewood. He says Advanced Wood Combustion, AWC, might provide North America with a clean, affordable, abundant, and decentralized stream of renewable energy. Broad Street Café, 1116 Broad Street. http://ncmls.org/periodictables
grrlscientist | March 5, 2009tags: coal mining, mountaintop removal, clean coal, electricity, streaming video
This video shows us the dirty lie behind so-called "clean coal" -- which is one of the main sources of power on the East Coast of the United States [1:55]
amillikan | March 2, 2009Following President Obama's address to Congress Tuesday, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal delivered a speech on behalf of the Republican National Committee that criticized a government spending bill, claiming it was "larded with wasteful spending" because it allotted $140 million for "something called 'volcano monitoring.' " But with 65 active volcanoes in the United States alone and the well-documented consequences of what happens when natural disaster potentials are not taken seriously, several ScienceBloggers are calling out Jindal and the idea that volcano monitoring isn't a good use of…
grrlscientist | March 1, 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…
aardvarchaeology | February 28, 2009
Skiing Break was action packed for the kids. Monday museum, Tuesday playland, Wednesday skiing with grampa, Thursday swimming, Friday museum & puppet theatre and a museum-organised LAN party for the 10-y-o.
Yesterday's museum was the Public Transport Museum which shares an entrance and a ticket with the Toy Museum. Lots of buses and trams, including one bus standing on a service pit where you can descend and check out the under side of the vehicle. Juniorette and I made a pink train carriage in the children's workshop.
One thing that caught my eye was a mothballed experimental hybrid bus…
jstemwedel | February 27, 2009This week, we finally get to the elder Free-Ride offspring's part of last-week's bath-night conversation about energy. Here's the audio of the discussion, complete with splashing bathwater and odd squawks from my computer.
For those who prefer words on the screen, the transcript is below.
Dr. Free-Ride: What do you know about energy?
Elder offspring: What do you mean, energy?
Dr. Free-Ride: I don't know, I guess if I was going to ask you, what kind of energy sources are you aware of ...
Elder offspring: Oh, there's nuclear power, there's solar power, there's wind power, there's water…
jstemwedel | February 26, 2009At the New York Times Room for Debate Blog, a bunch of commentators were asked to weigh in with easy-to-make changes Americans might adopt to reduce their environmental impact. One of those commentators, Juliet Schor, recommends eating less meat:
Rosamond Naylor, a researcher at Stanford, estimates that U.S. meat production is especially grain intensive, requiring 10 times the grain required to produce an equivalent amount of calories than grain, Livestock production, which now covers 30 percent of the world's non-ice surface area, is also highly damaging to soil and water resources.…
bcohen | February 26, 2009"The [Environmental Justice (EJ)] movement," writes Gwen Ottinger, "was galvanized in the early 1980s by the observation that toxic chemicals and other environmental hazards are concentrated in communities of color. EJ activists, many of them veterans of the civil rights movement, began to argue that social equality demanded an end to this 'environmental racism.' Currently, however, it is not equality but health that dominates grassroots activists' campaigns against chemical contamination."
Ottinger is a fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation's (CHF) Center for Contemporary History and…