environment
grrlscientist | June 5, 2008tags: arctic ice pack, global warming, climate change, environment, physics, streaming video
A stunning animation from WWF International Polar Programme, showing the progressive melting of Artice sea ice since 1979. The white is older ice -- five years or more old -- and the blues are progressively younger ice, with the shade closest to the ocean being fresh, or one year old, ice. The red dots are tracking buoys, showing how the ice is shifting further and faster as it melts. [0:34].
voltagegate | June 2, 2008
I finally got around to blogging about this study published in PLoS One a few weeks ago, regarding geophagy in tropical species of bats. The study provides a nice overview of the literature and some of the potential reasons why they (and we) do it.
We all eat dirt, in a sense, through mineral supplements or through the minerals and inorganic nutrients contained in our food, but there is a long history of the consumption of clay by human beings, and some tribes in sub-Saharan Africa continue to visit these "clay licks". Pregnant women in particular will frequent these licks. Scientists…
j7uy5 | May 26, 2008I'm harping on the same string. A month ago, I
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2008/05/poisoning_ourselves.php">noted
how it was not necessary for terrorists to figure out how to poison us.
Our own companies are doing it for them. Now, our
government is doing a heck of a job to make it easier for companies to
poison us, and to get away with it.
As noted by the former WaPo reporter, Ed Bruske, the USDA is no longer
keeping track of pesticide use. Formerly, the USDA published
an annual report a chemical usage in agriculture. It was the
only comprehensive, reliable…
revere | May 23, 2008If you aren't in the business of figuring out if a chemical is a health hazard you might never have heard of the EPA's IRIS (Integrated Risk Information System) database but suffice it to say it is a wealth of valuable information on the topic. Considered authoritative by many states and countries, its judgements have become the basis for official standards. It's been around since the start of Reagan's second term (1985) so there is no claim it is some kind of fringe environmentalist fantasy. It's not the Last Word but it's a loud voice and taken seriously by anyone tasked with protecting the…
revere | May 22, 2008Over the years I've seen more than enough of the murderous destruction "the magic mineral, "asbestos, has caused in the lives of workers and their families. Exposure to asbestos causes a serious, often fatal, scarring of the lungs called asbestosis and also two different kinds of cancer of the respiratory tract: lung cancer and mesothelioma. Both cancers are usually fatal, but while lung cancer can be caused by other agents like cigarettes and various occupational chemicals, mesothelioma is mostly a result of exposure to asbestos. "Meso," as it is often called, is a horrific disease. It…
revere | May 21, 2008Stephen Johnson is a career professional, now the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. He is reported to be very religious and to hold prayer meetings with select staff at the start of the day. Apparently he also takes "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" seriously. Too bad he doesn't take the US law and his sworn responsibility to protect its citizens from environmental hazards as seriously. New revelations show he is a liar, morally corrupt and intellectually dishonest. I guess prayer has its limits as a motivator of probity:
Environmental Protection Agency chief…
grrlscientist | May 19, 2008tags: surface temperature, global warming, climate change, weather, environment, streaming video
This streaming video reveals the temperatures of the Earth's surface since 1884. The video released by NASA and GISS. The only problem with this video is that I think it should run a little more slowly so it's easier to see the details. Note: Yellow = warmer than usual, Blue = cooler than usual, White = usual [0:32].
gregladen | May 18, 2008 Impacts from warming are evident in satellite images showing that lakes in Siberia disappearing as the permafrost thaws and lake water drains deeper into the ground. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory A new study led by NASA links anthropogenic climate change to a wide range of effects. The study involved scientists from about a dozen institutions and agencies, and looked at biological impacts arising from global temperature increase since the 1970s. The article is published in Nature. According to lead author Cynthia Rosenweig, "This is the first study to link global temperature data sets…
gregladen | May 15, 2008In this fiery and funny talk, New York Times food writer Mark Bittman weighs in on what's wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too little home cooking), and why it's putting the entire planet at risk.
jstemwedel | May 15, 2008Because it strikes me as somehow related to my last post, and because Memorial Day is the Monday after next, I'm recycling a post I wrote last year for WAAGNFNP:
On Memorial Day, because I really needed to do something beside grade papers for awhile, I decided to go to the nursery to buy some plants. First, though, because the kids (who had the day off from school) were actually entertaining themselves pretty well, I poured myself another coffee and decided to actually read some of the articles in The Nation issue on climate change.
Confronted with the news that jets are evil and carbon…
jstemwedel | May 15, 2008After what has felt to me like a cooler than usual April and beginning of May, we seem finally to be changing seasons here. (OK, changing seasons with a vengeance -- apparently our temperatures yesterday were record highs.)
Of course, in this part of California, we have two seasons: the green season and the gold season (which some insist on calling the brown season). The winter, and the winter rains, are over. Now it's time for things to dry out.
This, as Michael O'Hare notes, means that water districts are trying to work out what to do about anticipated water shortages. He writes:
The…
vhughes | May 12, 2008Despite An Inconvenient Truth's Oscar win and Al Gore's Nobel, public opinion of global warming has changed little since the film's release in 2006.
As Matt Nisbet recently pointed out: "Conventional wisdom pegged Gore's film and media campaign as changing the nature of the debate in the public's mind, but unfortunately this interpretation doesn't hold up to the data." Even more surprising is that apparently the debate is most heated among the college educated.
What about you guys? Did the film only tell you what you already knew? Did it change your mind? Did it bore you to tears?
Click…
gregladen | May 8, 2008
In this May 1, 2008, visible image from NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft, Cyclone Nargis is ... a Category one hurricane located 370 miles west of Yangon, Myanmar, moving east-northeast at eight knots.... Fishermen are advised not to venture out to sea.
Based on information from MSNBC, CNN and BBC, certain things regarding Nargis seem to be coming to light.
1) The death toll will likely exceed 100,000 people.
2) The Myanmar Junta might be hiding bodies.
3) The Myanmar Junta is allowing aid material but not aid workers into affected regions.
4) Given…
grrlscientist | May 7, 2008tags: Environment, Cyclone Nargis, Myanmar, Burma, Mangrove, Rhizophora species, Shrimp Farming, Fish Farming
Mangrove, Rhizophora species, in Cuba. [larger view].
I've written about the importance of mangrove forests before, and about the environmental disasters and human tragedies that result when they are wantonly destroyed. Unfortunately, as we are witnessing now, the widespread destruction of Burma's mangroves has magnified yet another human disaster in the wake of cyclone Nargis, a tragedy that might have claimed more than 100,000 lives, according to some news services' estimates…
grrlscientist | May 7, 2008tags: five easy ways to save the planet, environment, global warming, climate change, carbon footprint, streaming video
An amusing but instructive streaming video describing five easy ways that you can contribute to saving the planet. [3:42].
gregladen | May 6, 2008The Myanmar/Burma death toll is now experiencing the usual effects of poor information, limited reporting, and the outcome of being stuck between sensationalism and horror.
Most agencies are reporting 22,000 dead with twice that missing. I do think that these numbers are meaningless at this point, as the Junta government can't be trusted to be able to deliver this sort of information, and aid agencies are only now arriving on the scene.
About 50 million people live in the country,
The main cause of death appears to have been a storm surge that swept across towns and villages in the low…
edyong | May 5, 2008The countryside around Iraq and the Balkans are still suffering from the ravages of wars fought in the 1990s. The environment is littered with the potentially dangerous remnants of military weapons - depleted uranium.
Depleted uranium is what's left over after 'enrichment', when uranium-235 is separated from natural uranium. This isotope is suitable for nuclear reactors and weapons, and the remainder consists of uranium-238, a less radioactive isotope with a longer half-life. This "depleted uranium" is valued by the military for its high density and is often combined with titanium to produce…
revere | May 4, 2008A democratic party superdelegate answers Senator Clinton's challenge to repudiate her vote phishing:
"Senator Clinton claimed yesterday that I either stand with her on this proposal or stand with the oil companies. To that I say: I stand with the families of Colorado, who aren't looking for bumper sticker fixes that don't fix anything, but for meaningful change that brings real relief and a new direction for our energy policy. We can't afford more Washington-style pandering while families keep getting squeezed."
-- Congressperson, Senate candidate, and uncommitted superdelegate Mark Udall of…
scientificactivist | May 3, 2008A week after a major report found widespread Bush Administration political interference with science in the EPA, the Chicago Tribune reported late this week that the Administration has forced the resignation of Mary Gade, head of the EPA's Midwest office:
SAGINAW, Mich. - The battle over dioxin contamination in this economically stressed region had been raging for years when a top Bush administration official turned up the pressure on Dow Chemical to clean it up.
On Thursday, following months of internal bickering over Mary Gade's interactions with Dow, the administration forced her to quit…
j7uy5 | May 1, 2008In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, it was noticed that
there were cuts in the budget to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The rationale was that we needed to shift more funds to the
global and perpetual war on terror.
At the time, I said that "the terrorists" won't have to bother trying
to poison us. Our own companies would do it for them.
Yup.
href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/green/chi-epa-official-resigns_webmay02,0,4655733.story">TRIBUNE
EXCLUSIVE: EPA's top Midwest regulator forced out
Mary Gade, based in Chicago, says Bush…