environment
grrlscientist | September 7, 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 wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that are or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle bird pals, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is published here for your enjoyment. Here's this week's issue of the Birdbooker Report by which lists ecology, environment, natural history and bird books that are (or will…
pharyngula | September 6, 2008When we were in Ecuador, much of the local political discussion was around their efforts to write a new constitution for the country. I'd heard that there were some significantly progressive elements to the work, but this is the first I've seen some of the articles being considered: as is perhaps unsurprising for a nation well-endowed with natural resources and reliant on maintaining those resources to support the economy, they've done something terrific: they've not only written rights for nature (personified as "Pachamama"), but they've acknowledged the importance of evolution.
Art. 1.…
clock | September 6, 2008L.A.Times:
No other country has gone as far as Ecuador in proposing to give trees their day in court, but it certainly is not alone in its recalibration of natural rights. Religious leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop of Constantinople, have declared that caring for the environment is a spiritual duty. And earlier this year, the Catholic Church updated its list of deadly sins to include polluting the environment.
Ecuador is codifying this shift in sensibility. In some ways, this makes sense for a country whose cultural identity is almost…
aardvarchaeology | September 4, 2008For historical reasons having nothing to do with engineering or rationality, Swedish nuclear power plants dump a lot of warm cooling water into the sea. In a revealing blog entry, Paddy K offers an estimate of just how much energy that cooling water contains.
It's one third of the energy produced in the country.
I suddenly don't feel very motivated to keep my morning showers brief.
[More blog entries about environment, powerproduction, energy, nuclearpower, Sweden; miljö, energi, kärnkraft, energiproduktion.]
grrlscientist | September 1, 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 wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that are or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle bird pals, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is published here for your enjoyment. Here's this week's issue of the Birdbooker Report by which lists ecology, environment, natural history and bird books that are (or will…
clock | August 26, 2008
Thanks Bill for drawing my attention to iNaturalist which has the makings of an awesome site!
What is it?
It is essentially a Google Map where people can add pins every time they see an interesting critter: a plant, fungus, animal, etc. What is recorded is geographical coordinates and time when it was posted.
Moreover, people can link from the pins to pictures of the sighted critters if they upload them on Flickr (nice way to interlink existing social networking sites instead of reinventing the wheel). And they can put additional information, e.g., description of the habitat where they saw…
grrlscientist | August 24, 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 wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that are or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle bird pals, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is published here for your enjoyment. Here's this week's issue of the Birdbooker Report by which lists ecology, environment, natural history and bird books that are (or will…
revere | August 23, 2008There's a lot of concern about the environmental effects of drilling for oil off the US coast, but I don't buy it. Yes, I know it won't produce any meaningful amount of oil, ever, and no oil at all for years. But that's a technicality. Politically it's a compelling idea and even though it won't do any good, what's the harm? Drilling for oil in coastal marine environments is perfectly safe. Experts from the oil and gas industry have said this is true and who would know better?
In fact, who has more experience with oil on the high seas? These guys have been shipping oil on the world's oceans…
revere | August 22, 2008Yesterday was the 12th 22nd anniversary of an environmental catastrophe in Cameroon. On August 21, 1986 Lake Nyos in that West African country belched a huge load of carbon dioxide and suffocated 1700 people as they slept. Like its monoxygenated cousin carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide is "a colorless, odorless gas that can kill you in your sleep," as the marketing gurus of monoxide detector like to say, but it was true in spades on that fateful day 22 years ago. Carbon dioxide doesn't kill the same way as carbon monoxide, which binds tightly to the homoglobin in your blood, shutting out the…
j7uy5 | August 21, 2008In
the late '60's - early '70's, is was commonplace for bands to write
songs that were utterly meaningless, then pass them off as great works
of art. The products of pure genius.
I
head one such song on the way home from work:
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Horse_with_No_Name">A
Horse With No Name, by America, released in 1972.
Here's
a review on a site that has song lyrics:
bad
lyrics | Reviewer: george | 4/15/2008
This
song has a pretty good melody. It sounds good, IF YOU IGNORE THE
LYRICS. For example,
"in the desert, you can't remember your
name
'cause there ain't no…
revere | August 20, 2008Everyone seems to agree about one thing concerning Vice President Cheney's senior aide, F. Chase Hutto III. He never met an environmental regulation he didn't just hate and oppose on principle. According to the Washington Post he has been instrumental in keeping our air and water dirtier than it needs to be. Just another day at the office in the Bush administration. Now, in the waning days of the Bush Reich, they want to name him a high official in the Department of Energy where he will in charge of policies related to climate change. The foundation of the climate change debate is the science…
clock | August 18, 2008Save the planet? Buy it:
Millionaires are purchasing entire ecosystems around the world and turning them into conservation areas. Their goal? To stop environmental catastrophe.
But will they know how to do it well? Will they inject some of their own incorrect ideas into their projects? Who will they listen to when designing these? Will their kids continue?
grrlscientist | August 17, 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).
Here's this week's issue of the Birdbooker Report by Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, which lists ecology, environment, natural history and bird books that are (or will soon be) available for purchase. This edition is absolutely packed with book titles that you will want to read!
FEATURED TITLE:
James, Jamie. The Snake Charmer: A Life and Death in Pursuit of Knowledge. 2008. Hyperion. Hardbound: 260 pages. Price…
gregladen | August 13, 2008Unspoilt Amazonian rainforests covering an area almost as large as Texas have been provisionally earmarked for oil and gas exploration.
A new report reveals that the area has been divided into 180 "blocks" designated for exploration by governments of countries that own the land on the western fringe of the Amazon. Their intention is to lease the blocks to oil and gas companies for exploration and extraction, taking a cut of any revenues as a royalty. About 35 oil companies are vying for the contracts.
More information here.
revere | August 13, 2008The Bush administration wants to slow walk worker protection regulations, even when required by law, through the use of additional layers of review by the Office of Management and Budget. We wrote about this recently here (and see Celeste Monforton's excellent work at The Pump Handle). But let's be fair. The Bush administration doesn't always want to slow up rule making. At least not when wealthy land developers or their cronies in federal agencies are concerned:
The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction…
gregladen | August 12, 2008There is a constant battle between conservatives (aka Republicans, or stoopid people) and liberals (aka Democrats, or smart people) as to how to regulate industry. Republicans say "don't regulate industry at all." Why? because they are paid by industry to say this. If you think there is anything else going on here you are not even a tiny bit as smart as you think you are and should go back to school.
Each Republican congress tries to remove regulation, and each administration tries to weaken the existing regulation. Currently, the Bush Administration is planning to remove all the…
skookumchick | August 12, 2008Astrodyke reminds us that we're mid-Perseid meteor shower these days. I actually woke up at 3:30 am this morning (NOT on purpose) and thought about going to look, but I was too dog tired from the move out (move in is tomorrow).
Did you see anything?
Apparently we have another chance tonight! Yay! (Zzzzz....)
edyong | August 12, 2008An international group of scientists have recruited a team of unlikely research assistants to help them study the Southern Ocean that surrounds Antarctica - elephant seals. Boldly going where current buoys, satellites and ships cannot, the intrepid fieldworkers will help to fill blind spots in our knowledge of this most inaccessible of oceans.
Our knowledge of the effects of climate change at the planet's poles is heavily skewed towards the Arctic. There, it's clear that the sea-ice cover is gradually shrinking. But at the opposite end of the world, in Antarctica, data is harder to come by…
grrlscientist | August 10, 2008tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
Here's this week's issue of the Birdbooker Report by Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, which lists ecology, environment, natural history and bird books that are (or will soon be) available for purchase.
FEATURED TITLE:
Newton, Ian. The Migration Ecology of Birds. 2008. Academic Press. Hardbound: 976 pages. Price: $74.95 U.S. [Amazon: $67.46]. SUMMARY: An up-to-date, detailed and thorough review of bird migration.
New and…