environment
jstemwedel | July 14, 2008Randy Olson's newest film, Sizzle, bears the subtitle, "a global warming comedy". To my mind, it delivered neither the laughs nor the engagement with the issue of global warming that it promised. Maybe this is just a sign that I fall outside the bounds of Olson's intended audience, but perhaps the biggest question this movie left me with was who precisely Olson is trying to reach with Sizzle.
The film starts out presenting itself almost as Olson's own follow-up to An Inconvenient Truth; Olson notes that he liked Al Gore's movie a lot but wondered where all the scientists were. He…
clock | July 14, 2008How free access internet resources benefit biodiversity and conservation research: Trinidad and Tobago's endemic plants and their conservation status:
Botanists have been urged to help assess the conservation status of all known plant species. For resource-poor and biodiversity-rich countries such assessments are scarce because of a lack of, and access to, information. However, the wide range of biodiversity and geographical resources that are now freely available on the internet, together with local herbarium data, can provide sufficient information to assess the conservation status of…
sciencewoman | July 14, 2008While some dismiss the Midwest as "flyover states" and locals decry a brain drain that admittedly I am part of, non-human species seem to be arriving in the area in droves. Here's a pictorial tour of some of the exotic species that have recently settled in the area.
The yellow flower in the middle ground of the pictures is wild parsnip - a really nasty invasive exotic. It also causes a nasty "burn" when it comes in contact with your skin and leaves a brown mark that can last for years. (Renewable energy is quite a bit deal in this part of the Midwest - there are a lot of wind farms being…
jstemwedel | July 11, 2008Because the three-dimensional world has had me in a headlock (and a heat-wave), I'm tardy in passing on the news that ScienceBlogs is hosting a new blog, Next Generation Energy, that is slated to run from July 9 to October 9. On this blog, Seed editors, ScienceBlogs bloggers, and outside experts will be discussing future energy policy and alternative energy solutions.
Among other things, the folks at Next Generation Energy will have a weekly question they'll try to answer from their various perspectives. This week's question asks for predictions about the viable non-oil (and non-corn-…
gregladen | July 11, 2008... Or just some kind of odd Internet Shenanigans.
It turns out that if there is an organized effort to bias the discussion, it may be coming from the usual place ... the trolls...
As I've been following the new energy blog on Sb, something seemed odd. Tiny pieces of evidence filtered together ... a memory here, a memory there ... and suddenly it became apparent that one of the commenters on Sceicneblogs new energy blog "Next Generation Energy" not only rang a bell, but indeed might be ringing numerous bells.
I'm talking about Kent Beuchert. Kent is always there on the internet when the…
edyong | July 11, 2008
If you've never had the pleasure of swimming among a coral reef, you might want to get your chance sooner rather than later. Yesterday, the journal Science published the first comprehensive global assessment of the status of the world's reef-building corals, and it's results don't make for comforting reading. Almost a third of the 700-plus species surveyed face extinction; no group of land-living species, except possibly for the amphibians, are this threatened.
A team of 39 scientists led by Ken Carpenter, director of the Global Marine Species Assessment gauged the extinction risk faced by…
clock | July 10, 2008This is very cool - African Bushmeat Expedition is a project which takes high school students to Africa where they both learn the techniques and at the same time do something very useful - track the appearance of wild animal meat in the market:
Although illegal wildlife poaching is conducted worldwide, the impact in Africa has been devastating. Unsustainable commercial hunting for bushmeat will inevitably lead to species extinction. In turn, localized species extinction impacts the health of native ecosystems. Marketing of illegal bushmeat can also have serious ramifications because pathogens…
pharyngula | July 9, 2008We have a new blog here: Next Generation Energy, a temporarily active blog discussing alternative energy. It's a bit of an odd duck and an experiment, with a team of bloggers focused on this one issue and exploring it for a limited term, but check it out.
One concern I can predict: it's sponsored by Shell Oil (what next? A blog on the virtues of vegetarianism sponsored by McDonalds?). To allay concerns a bit, we've been assured that Shell will not be imposing editorial constraints — although, of course, there is always the indirect pressure caused by the fact that displeasing your patron may…
clock | July 9, 2008There is a new (temporary) blog on scienceblogs.com - Next Generation Energy:
For the next three months, Seed editors and a hand-picked team of guest bloggers will delve into energy policies of all kinds--from carbon capture to windmills.
Every Wednesday, we'll post a new topic or question about alternative energy on the blog. In the days following, our expert guess bloggers will post their answers to the question, and respond to questions and comments from readers.
So without further ado, here's our first week's question:
Our oil supplies are down. And with rising concerns of global food…
gregladen | July 9, 2008Consider this question:
Our oil supplies are down. And with rising concerns of global food supplies, the loudly touted ethanol now seems to be a no-go, too. So, in the coming years, what do you think will become the world's most viable alternative energy solution?
Me? I question the premise. It is not necessarily the case that ethanol competes with food. That depends on how it is done (both the ethanol and the food). In addition, have "a most viable" fuel may be exactly what we DON"T want. Maybe we want to dance like a butterfly on this fuel thing .. be very adaptable.
But I digress.…
j7uy5 | July 7, 2008There is an interesting and thought-provoking essay at The Oil Drum.
It was written by
href="http://www.uvm.edu/giee/?Page=about/students/Nathan_Hagens.html&SM=about/about_menu.html">Nathan
Hagens, a student at the Gund Institute, University of
Vermont.
He makes some errors in the science, and engages in some armchair
hypothesizing (see graph above), but the overall conclusions are not
affected.
He romps through evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, and behavioral
neuroscience on his way to explaining why we have an addiction to oil.
It clearly is not intended to be a…
skookumchick | July 3, 2008Gas prices keep going up, and don't kid yourself that they're going to go down again anytime soon either (enjoy those profits, ExxonMobil shareholders...). Some places in the US are looking down the road at $5/gallon, and of course Europeans have been paying vastly more than that for years. The news is rife with stories of police departments worrying about going broke because gas is too expensive, and schools that can't afford the food they cook to give kids lunch at school because food costs are going up too much (which of course hits the poor kids more than the rich kids - yeah, that…
grrlscientist | July 2, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, global warming, climate variation, climate change, penguins, El Nino, marine zoning, P. Dee Boersma
Adélie penguins, Pygoscelis adeliae, and chicks.
(a) Adélie penguin chicks may get covered in snow during storms, but beneath the snow their down is warm and dry. (b) When rain falls, downy Adélie chicks can get wet and, when soaked, can become hypothermic and die.
Images: P. Dee Boersma.
According to an article that was just published in the journal BioScience, penguin populations are declining sharply due to the combined effects of overfishing and pollution…
pharyngula | July 2, 2008
I'm very fond of Chris Turney's book, Bones, Rocks, and Stars. It's a slender, simple description of the many tools scientists use to figure out how old something is, and when arguing with young earth creationists, it's become the first thing I recommend to them. It's short and easy to read, and focuses on explaining how dating methods work.
Turney has a new book out: Ice, Mud and Blood: Lessons from Climates Past(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). This is the one you'll be able to hand to climate change denialists, and it's a winner.
Its virtues are the same as his previous book, the careful…
gregladen | June 30, 2008I find it hard to believe that the government has ignored the need for solar energy to the extent that it seems surprised that anyone wants to build new solar plants. From the New York Times:
Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.
The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six…
pharyngula | June 30, 2008If you've got an hour, this conversation between Carl Zimmer and Paul Ehrlich is well worth listening to. Ehrlich has a somewhat controversial reputation as an ecological Cassandra…but remember, Cassandra was right.
j7uy5 | June 28, 2008Meteorology is outside of my usual topics for posting, but this
particular news item seems to have received little attention elsewhere: there is evidence that the jet streams are moving, systematically,
toward the poles.
The jet streams are high-altitude streams of air, about 7 to 16
kilometers over sea level. They blow air from west to east.
Jet streams are important factors in the causation of weather patterns.
Therefore, systematic changes in the jet streams are expected
to cause
changes in weather patterns. Now, we have evidence that the
jet streams are changing.
href="http…
skookumchick | June 27, 2008Some longtime readers may know I'm enormously frustrated at the corporatization of engineering, and think that if engineers say they solve problems then there are some enormous problems of housing, lack of clean water, and energy use in impoverished communities across the globe that need solving and we engineers as a profession should get cracking on them. Here are two couple of examples of people who are doing just that:
Architecture for Humanity is an organization that started after the South Asian tsunami to design buildings to help rebuild not only the structure but also the spirit and…
grrlscientist | June 26, 2008tags: The Last Flight of The Scarlet Macaw, conservation, endangered species, parrots, politics, Bruce Barcott, book review
Nonfiction books are often thought of as being "good for us", as if they were literary vitamin tablets, but many people take their summers off from their vitamins by reading trashy novels or mysteries while ensconced under an umbrella on a sandy beach. So what would you say if you could read a book that has the best qualities of both genres? If you think that such a book doesn't exist, well, think again: Bruce Barcott's recently published book, The Last Flight of The…
mikethemadbiologist | June 25, 2008If Republicans claim that oil pipelines are good for caribou, I wonder what they'll make of the blackfly outbreak in Maine. About the first half of the previous sentence--that's not hyperbole. Really (by way of Digby):
During a radio interview on Wednesday, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) attempted to argue that drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) would be beneficial for Arctic wildlife. Bachmann claimed that drilling would cause not only an "enhancement of wildlife expansion," but that the area around oil pipelines would also "become a meeting ground and '…