environment
gregladen | January 14, 2009The IPCC report is out, "An Inconvenient Truth" has been honored by the academy, a sea change is happening in the way that climate change news is being reported, and you can bet the Right Wing and the Ree-pubs are as we speak working up new Talking Points and Spins to deflate the urgency of the issue. It is an axiom that in reporting science, there are two (not one, not three or four, just two) sides to every issue, and one side is the plank nailed to the Democratic Party Platform, and the other side is the plank nailed to the Ree-pub Party Platform. This is a truth as stable and reliable…
clock | January 13, 2009Did you know that the largest desert on Earth is Antarctica? And the second largest is Arctic? And only then comes Sahara!
Well, I knew that because Hal Heathwole taught a Desert Ecology course that many of my buddies in grad school took. But if you don't believe me, check out the Wikipedia page about deserts.
And then, don't stop at that. Do you have a blog? If not, start one. If yes, sit down and write a post about a desert. Then send it to the very first edition of the Carnival of the Arid:
Submissions should have something to do with a desert somewhere in the world. (If you're not…
greengabbro | January 13, 2009One of my New Year's blogolutions was to clear out my to-blog folder, and bring closure to my unfinished drafts by simply posting them as-is. This is one of those drafts. Disorganized paragraphs, unfinished sentences, and general incoherence enhance the natural character and beauty of a half-written blog post and should not be considered flaws or defects.
Draft date: November 19, 2008
I stopped writing this post because I convinced myself that I was probably maybe sorta wrong, and not just because we are mining the Ogallala... but now I can't remember my own argument. So I'll punt to…
gregladen | January 11, 2009One of the most interesting and exciting stories in science is that of the Younger Dryas. The Younger Dryas was a climate event that had important effects on human history, and that has been reasonably linked to some of our most important cultural changes, and ultimately some evolutionary changes as well. That is one reason why it is interesting. In addition, the Younger Dryas was a pretty big deal ... a climate change or something like a climate change that caused massive changes all around the earth, and fairly recently. But the cause of the Younger Dryas is at present unknown, although…
grrlscientist | January 11, 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…
amillikan | January 8, 2009On Tuesday, President Bush garnered favor with marine conservationists in a last-minute move to protect over 195,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean—more than any president in history. The new marine reserve, which includes parts of the Mariana Trench in addition to several coral reefs and atolls, will be protected from mining, fishing, oil exploration and other destructive activities. ScienceBlogger James Hrynyshyn celebrated Bush's decision, but reminded, "By failing to accept the reality of climate change...he will more likely be remembered as the president who missed the boat."
greengabbro | January 8, 2009One of my New Year's blogolutions was to clear out my to-blog folder, and bring closure to my unfinished drafts by simply posting them as-is. This is one of those drafts. Disorganized paragraphs, unfinished sentences, and general incoherence enhance the natural character and beauty of a half-written blog post and should not be considered flaws or defects.
Draft date: October 22, 2008
I don't know what it is about Dinosaur Comics that inspires me to be a contrarian, but when I saw this, I immediately wanted to prove T-rex wrong.
Wear Gloves - Last night we gave in and ran the heater for the…
grrlscientist | January 4, 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…
jstemwedel | January 1, 2009... as drawn by the younger Free-Ride offspring.
The Earth as described in 2006:
The moon was going through its phases, the meteor catcher was catching meteors, and the ozone layer, while holey, was still there.
The Earth as described in 2009:
The meteor catcher appears to have been replaced by a large satellite dish. Maybe we have better options with which to handle falling meteors now. (Or maybe we've just prioritized telecommunications.)
Just past the asteroid belt, Mars seems in a very close approach to Earth (possibly because the Mars Rover would appears to be back on Earth -- for…
revere | January 1, 2009One tradition of News Years Day in the US is the college football bowl game. When I was young I always watched the Rose Bowl (my state university was in the Big Ten league), but I have gotten away from it and don't expect to be glued to the TV today. But there will still be something glued to the football field, at least metaphorically: the dirty leavings of "Clean Coal." An American college football field is 120 yards long and 53.34 yards wide. That's 6400 square yards. Last week a retention pond containing coal ash from a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) coal fired power plant let loose 5.4…
clock | December 30, 2008Every now and then I mention light pollution on this blog, usually from a biologist's perspective. But here is another perspective - using "dark sky" as a tourist attraction - a place where one can actually see the stars:
Nonetheless, Galloway Forest Park contains the darkest skies in Europe, and Steve Owens, co-coordinator of the IYA plans in the UK, is determined to gain recognition from the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) as a lasting legacy for the 2009 celebrations.
The certification process is challenging. According to the Guardian, "to earn dark sky park status, officials in…
greengabbro | December 30, 2008Er, I mean, technically, cell phone use, car use, and a tendency to plan things at the last minute are all correlated. It's poor form to confuse correlation with causation, even if it does gratify my latent Luddite tendencies.
Or so says a survey of Norwegian families. Er, I mean, technically, the abstract to a paper about a survey of Norwegian families. I haven't read the paper; insert open access rant (and/or a lament about local university library budgets) here.
Still, it makes a nice story. You're making plans at the last minute (which only works because everyone involved has a cell…
revere | December 29, 2008The fact that EPA has just approved a safer and more environmentally sound refrigerant is amazing news in itself. But the story behind this new product is even more amazing. The material, called HCR-188c, is a hydrocarbon blend of common materials (among them ethane, propane, isobutene, normal butane) that have no ozone depleting potential and very little in the way of greenhouse gas type of heat trapping. Even better, appliances require only a quarter the amount as current refrigerants (hydrochlorofluorocarbons, HCFCs, and hydrofluorocarbons, HFCs), costs 20 cents per charge compared to 62…
pharyngula | December 23, 2008When power plants burn coal to produce energy, the coal doesn't just vanish into the atmosphere to cause global warming. No, there's a substantial amount of left-over sludge called coal ash, a nasty mess that is enriched for toxic heavy metals. It is seriously nasty stuff. This glop has to be stored, somewhere, usually piled up and walled-off, because it's not healthy for anything.
Behold what happens when the containment walls fail.
This is happening right now, here in the United States. Yesterday, a retaining wall failed, and 500 million gallons of coal ash — the vile grey slime in the…
grrlscientist | December 21, 2008tags: 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…
jstemwedel | December 17, 2008You may remember that last year we were inspired by Bake for a Change to dabble in "green" gingerbread construction. As 2008 draws to a close, the challenge has been issued once again to make a house both good enough to eat and eco-friendly enough to heat (or cool, etc.).
The rules are the same as they were last year:
1) Everything must be edible.
2) However half-baked (har har), there must be at least FOUR identifiable sustainable building design elements.
3) Your design must include a minimum of a floor, a door, four walls, a roof, and two windows.
This year our effort resulted in a…
gregladen | December 17, 2008Predatory rodents are eating the chicks of the Critically Endangered Tristan Albatross Diomedea dabbenena to the extent that they have had the worst breeding season recorded so far.
The mice are also affecting Gough Island's other Critically Endangered endemic species, Gough Bunting Rowettia goughensis. A recent survey of the bunting's population revealed that the population has halved within the last two decades. Now there are only an estimated 400-500 pairs left.
"We've known for a long time that the mice were killing albatross chicks in huge numbers. However, we now know that the…
mikethemadbiologist | December 15, 2008...never mind believe in. Obama can do much better than former Clinton official and current corporate lobbyist David Hayes for Secretary of Interior. As a lobbyist for Ford, Hayes chose to side with Ford over a poor Native American community:
Trying to stick the cost of the clean-up of a toxic waste dump on a rural, economically disadvantaged American Indian community is not the kind of behavior one would want to see from a potential Secretary of the Interior. The Ringwood superfund site is a little-known American tragedy and David J. Hayes, as recently as 2007, was trying to get the…
clock | December 15, 2008The next Sigma Xi Pizza Lunch -- noon, Wednesday, Dec. 17 -- is a chance to learn more about climate change's expected environmental toll. UNC-Chapel Hill marine biologist and ecologist John Bruno will discuss recent research on links between coral disease outbreaks and warming waters.
The Pizza Lunch speaker series is free and open to science journalists and science communicators of all stripes. Feel free to forward this invitation to anyone you would like to see included. RSVPs are required (so we can get a reliable slice count) to cclabby@amsci.org.
Directions to Sigma XI: http://www.…