environment
clock | September 14, 2006Warming Climate May Put Chill On Arctic Polar Bear Population:
The new research suggests that progressively earlier breakup of the Arctic sea ice, stimulated by climate warming, shortens the spring hunting season for female polar bears in Western Hudson Bay and is likely responsible for the continuing fall in the average weight of these bears. As females become lighter, their ability to reproduce and the survival of their young decline. Also, as the bears become thinner, they are more likely to push into human settlements for food, giving the impression that the population is increasing. The…
pharyngula | September 14, 2006Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Republicans are capable of thinking long term—really long term. After a recent hearing, Rep. Don Young (Reprehensible, Alaska) enlightened us with a Deep Thought:
Before he left the hearing, Young, noting the presence of network TV crews, took a moment to reflect on his thoughts regarding climate change, citing the benefit of global warming -- not caused by man -- in another eon to an area that today is frozen much of the year. "We're dealing with the most northern part of the United States of America, and a most hostile climate, and we're pumping oil, and I'd just…
scientificactivist | September 14, 2006Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future
by Jeff Goodell
Houghton Mifflin: 2006. 352 pages.
Buy now! (Amazon)
Coal tends to inspire a few common images in our collective minds. Grizzled and hardened miners, working in deep, dark underground tunnels, piece by piece haul out the black feed needed to power the oversized, dirty, rumbling machines spewing out their noxious waste through tall smokestacks. In the process, these beasts power the rise of the world's up and coming superpower, the US.
Dirty. Dangerous. Imprecise. Big.... Old school.
In the Twenty-First Century…
pharyngula | September 12, 2006Stop it! Some misguided people are killing stingrays in apparent retribution for the death of Steve Irwin.
A fisheries department official says up to ten of the normally docile fish have been found dead and mutilated on Australia's eastern coast since Steve Irwin was killed by one last week. At least two had their tails lopped off.
As the article goes on to say, this is the antithesis of what a conservationist like Irwin would have wanted.
clock | September 11, 2006Destructive insects on rise in Alaska:
Destructive insects in unprecedented numbers are finding Alaska forests to be a congenial home, said University of Alaska forestry professor Glenn Juday, and climate change could be the welcome mat.
Warmer winters kill fewer insects. Longer, warmer summers let insects complete a life cycle and reproduce in one year instead of two, the forest ecologist said.
Warm winters also can damage trees and make them less able to fend off insect attacks by changing the nature of snow. Instead of light, fluffy snow formed at extreme cold temperatures, warm winters…
clock | September 7, 2006"Greenwashing is what corporations do when they try to make themselves look more environmentally friendly than they really are."
Will has more, much more....
pharyngula | September 7, 2006Real Minnesota purists will like this: a new blog, Sky Blue Waters, dedicated to environmental issues in Minnesota. The big story right now is on a major oil pipeline being run through the state, and there are also articles on other Minnesota concerns: energy issues like wind farms and ethanol production, and pollution concerns, like runoff from feedlots.
pharyngula | September 5, 2006One after the other, I got two requests to promote some worthy causes which need letter-writers to help out. Here they are:
Save wilderness:
Over the strong objections of Native people, wildlife biologists, sportsmen's groups, and the general public, the Bureau of Land Management remains intent on leasing one of the most remarkable wetlands complexes on the planet. The place is the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), the largest single block of wild public land left in the United States.
Save minds:
On Monday, the Ohio Board of Education will hold…
mikethemadbiologist | September 1, 2006
Here's what the mayor of Salt Lake City, UT said yesterday. You would think he's one of those Northeast liberal elitist, latte-drinkin' types...
Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Jackson:
A patriot is a person who loves his or her country.
Who among you loves your country so much that you have come here today to raise your voice out of deep concern for our nation - and for our world?
And who among you loves your country so much that you insist that our nation's leaders tell us the truth?
Let's hear it: "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth!"
Let no one deny we are patriots. We…
pharyngula | August 30, 2006Hunters should be allies of conservationists—in the best situations, hunting and wildlife groups have been great advocates of preserving habitat, which is the core issue, I think, in protecting biodiversity. If they're doing it so they can go in and blow away a few big meaty game animals, well, OK…setting aside that acreage also means a richer array of songbirds and arthropods and plants and fish and lizards and amphibians, which normally aren't shot up, have a better chance of survival.
Sometimes, though, short-sightedness and denial and a refusal to deal with a minor inconvenience undercut…
pharyngula | August 29, 2006Chris has his latest, greatest cartoon. It's correct: you're either nuts, short-sightedly stupid, or venal to an extreme if you support the Republican party in any way anymore.
purepedantry | August 27, 2006First, I would note that I think Jared Diamond is a fabulous scientist, and a brilliant man. His work in Guns, Germs and Steel was genius, and well qualifies him in my book as someone we should all listen to.
However, Terry Hunt, writing in the American Scientist, questions one of the arguments he forwarded in his more recent book Collapse.
One of the core arguments in the book is the example of the people of Easter Island or Rapa Nui. Diamond attempts to document how the people who settled the island exhausted all their resources, and he uses this as a parable for the environmental…
pharyngula | August 24, 2006If you've been following the Australian lungfish saga, there's a new development, and it's an ugly one. As the Noosa Journal reports (they don't seem to have a web accessible archive, so this issue may vanish soon; here's a screenshot), the Queensland government is actively suppressing scientific information that highlights the environmental costs of building the damaging dams.
The Beattie Government has ordered the shredding of a vital report used to list the unique Queensland lungfish under Federal environmental laws, according to a world authority on the species, Macquarie University's…
mikethemadbiologist | August 17, 2006That's right--you heard it here first: algal blooms on the Charles River in Boston. Spake Universal Hub:
A blogger by the name of Mike the Mad Biologist, proving why we should get all our news from Technorati and Google Blogsearch, scoops the Globe by more than a week on the story (hmm, if a blogger posts in the Charles when nobody's around, does he still get coated in green slime?).
What's really sad is that none of the crack reporters at the Globe cared or knew that the water in the Charles River was fluorescent green for at least a week. Next time, you guys might want to check that out…
scientificactivist | August 15, 2006Since I've been on the road so much lately, I haven't really had a chance to follow up on some of the more interesting links forwarded to me lately. Each probably deserves its own post... but I'm going to dump them all into this post anyway. Besides, there seems to be a common thread running through all of them.
First up is an interview with climate scientist Ben Santer in Environmental Science & Technology. Santer was a lead author on the president's recent Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) and has been a target of anti-environmental groups since he was a lead author on a 1995…
scientificactivist | August 11, 2006This week's installment of Fantastical Fridays discusses a not-so-impressive finding reported in the media in January 2006. From the archives:
(30 January 2006) To all of those who worried about the United States' dependence on Middle Eastern oil, who tried to raise awareness about dwindling global oil reserves, or who fought for decent fuel economy standards, you can all go home now. We found the answer: methane... methane hydrate. Boy were we misguided, thinking that renewable or clean energy sources might be a part of the solution. USA TODAY reports on humanity's newfound salvation…
clock | August 10, 2006As the temperatures rise, different organisms respond differently. Some migrate to higher latitudes or altitudes. Others stay put but change the timing of reproduction and other seasonal activities. As a result, ecosystems get remodeled.
So, for instance, insect pollinators and flowers they pollinate may get out of sync.
Animals tend to use photoperiod as a major clue for seasonal timing, with temperature only modulating the response to some extent.
Plants, on the other hand, although they certainly can use photoperiod, are much more strongly influenced by temperature. Non-biologists who…
clock | August 10, 2006This is interesting:
Landscapes And Human Behavior:
On Arizona State University's (ASU) Polytechnic campus, graduate student families in the cluster of six houses abutting lush lawns and ornamental bushes spend time together talking while their kids play outside. Meanwhile, the families in a nearby cluster of six homes barely know each other. But that may be in part because their homes sit on native Sonoran desert, not nearly as conducive to recreation as the lush microclimate researchers created in the first neighborhood. Social scientists and biophysical ecologists are finding that…
scientificactivist | August 10, 2006From the archives:
(23 April 2006) The media is by its very nature sensational, and on the issue of global warming this can swing both ways. Therefore, there was a big fuss over a study in Nature this past Thursday that seemed to lay out a more conservative estimate for the expected increase in temperature due to global warming. Although some coverage was more damning than others, the quantity of press on the subject was extensive.
As an article the next day in Science explained, though, all the Nature paper did was narrow down the range of possible scenarios to what was already the widely…
scientificactivist | August 9, 2006From the archives:
(19 January 2006) Today's issue of Nature features several interesting articles about the effects of global warming. Two are research articles, with one revising estimates of the expected increase in sea level due to global warming and the other demonstrating how certain important marine ecosystems could be vulnerable to changes in ocean currents due to global warming. The journal also contains an editorial and a news feature about the need to monitor ocean currents more closely to better assess the consequences of global warming and to warn us of impending climate…