environment
scientificactivist | August 8, 2006From the archives:
(13 January 2006) What do global warming and epidemic diseases have in common? Apparently they have a lot, at least when it comes to amphibians.
Microorganisms have a knack for showing up in unexpected places. In the 1980s, two scientists discovered a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori that causes over 80% of stomach ulcers, once thought to be primarily caused by stress. This turned medical dogma upside-down and earned them the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine . Even microorganisms aren't safe from other microorganisms, with bacteria, for example under constant…
pharyngula | August 7, 2006There is now an online petition to save the Australian Lungfish. Take a moment and put your name on it!
Also, it's not just the lungfish—as Monika Dieker reminded me, there's also the Mary River Turtle at risk.
grrlscientist | August 4, 2006What is global dimming? It is a cooling effect that appears to have partially masked the effects of global warming. Global dimming is caused by a reduction in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth due to the presence of aerosolized particulate pollution, such as jet contrails. These airborne particles reflect sunlight back into space before it hits the surface of the earth, reducing warming and thereby masking the effects of global warming.
This streaming video (below the fold) by Nova shows how the average temperature range in the United States jumped by more than one degree celsius (two…
pharyngula | August 4, 2006Lots of sources are telling me about Pat Robertson's sudden acceptance of the fact of global warming. I'm sorry, but it's no cause for rejoicing. He accepts it for the wrong reasons.
This week the heat index, the perceived temperature based on both air temperatures and humidity, reached 115 Fahrenheit in some regions of the U.S. East Coast. The 76-year-old Robertson told viewers that was "the most convincing evidence I've seen on global warming in a long time."
If there's one broad, overall message I wish everyone would get from this blog and from my teaching, it's that science isn't about…
grrlscientist | August 1, 2006
Nacreous clouds above McMurdo Station in Antarctica.
Image: Matt Thompson.
Nacreous means pearlescene or pearl-like, and these clouds are commonly referred to as "mother of pearl clouds".
These rare clouds form at altitudes of 15,000-25,000 meters (50,000-80,000 ft) above the earth's surface only when the sun is several degrees below the horizon, so other clouds at lower altitudes appear black. Their dazzling iridescent colors result from refraction of sunlight through tiny water-ice crystals that are carried by very strong, extremely cold winds in the stratosphere.
But because the…
clock | July 31, 2006Carnival of the Green #38 is up on Treehugger (and I am so used by now to be called Boris, which is a Russian name...)
pharyngula | July 31, 2006There is now a web page dedicated to the Neoceratodus cause. If you haven't yet fired off a letter to oppose the destruction of the lungfish's habitat, there's a sample letter there to help you get started. It's not too late to make your voice heard!
clock | July 27, 2006Orcinus: Conserving orcas, and humans too
Shakespeare's Sister: Off-Limits Humor
Echidne Of The Snakes: Divorce -- Preparing For Travels in Wingnuttia
clock | July 27, 2006The latest AskTheScienceBlogger question is:
"I heard that within 15 years, global warming will have made Napa County too hot to grow good wine grapes. Is that true? What other changes are we going to see during our lifetimes because of global warming?..."
Answer under the fold....
I am not a big wine connoisseur, though I like an occasional glass of French burgundy, German riesling, Adriatic cabernet or Argentinian malbec. Also, I heard that wine is generally thought to be good for you (although you should take every claim in that article with a grain of salt, e.g., aboutmelatonin in wine…
pharyngula | July 27, 2006Yikes—it's like some kind of horror movie: Inhofe meets Robertson.
Look, Pat, I don't have to tell you about reading the Scriptures, but one of mine that I've always enjoyed is Romans 1, 22 and 23. You quit worshipping God and start worshipping the creation -- the creeping things, the four-legged beasts, the birds and all that. That's their god. That's what they worship.
I'm not a big fan of the Bible, and every time I do dig into it, I find myself disgusted—and this is no exception. I had to look up Romans.
15So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at…
pharyngula | July 27, 2006Peter Doran published a paper several years ago showing that parts of Antarctica were actually cooling, rather than warming—that there were local variations in temperature trends. This is not surprising. It's also not surprising that he was quote-mined like mad by the global warming denialists. He has now written a calm, solid rejection of the misuse of his data in the NY Times.
Our results have been misused as "evidence" against global warming by Michael Crichton in his novel "State of Fear" and by Ann Coulter in her latest book, "Godless: The Church of Liberalism." Search my name on the Web…
clock | July 25, 2006 I wrote this on the Edwards campaign blog on December 15, 2003 and copied it on www.jregrassroots.org a few months later, then posted it again on Science And Politics on August 23, 2004:
An individual can be a President of USA for 4-8 years.
Human civilization is, depending on your definition of civilization, about 5,000-20,000 years old.
Human species (or something like it) has been around for about 1.000,000 years.
There has been Life on Earth for about 3,600.000,000 years.
Do you have the power of imagination to imagine a 100 years? How about a thousand? Ten thousand? A million years? A…
pharyngula | July 23, 2006
I have no idea what the cephalopods flying over the city have to do with the ecological message in the small print, but heck, it's a cool picture anyway.
Maybe it has something to do with octopuses swimming over flooded cities, but they look airborn to me.
clock | July 23, 2006Carnival of the Green #37 is up on Myke's Weblog. Of course, this carnival is self-sustainable...
pharyngula | July 21, 2006The story of the Australian lungfish has made this week's issue of Nature. Remember, it's not too late to keep the pressure on.
Dam project threatens living fossil
Lungfish face extinction, say environmentalists.
We are about to lose a key piece of our evolutionary history, warn biologists. They are campaigning to save the Australian lungfish, which they fear could be sent extinct by an enormous dam planned for southeastern Queensland.
The hefty, muddy-brown fish (Neoceratodus forsteri) is thought to have survived virtually unchanged for at least 100 million years, making it one of the…
pharyngula | July 20, 2006Even reading Peggy Noonan through an Attaturk filter is dangerous. I read this little scrap and felt neurons popping throughout my cortex.
During the past week's heat wave--it hit 100 degrees in New York City Monday--I got thinking, again, of how sad and frustrating it is that the world's greatest scientists cannot gather, discuss the question of global warming, pore over all the data from every angle, study meteorological patterns and temperature histories, and come to a believable conclusion on these questions: Is global warming real or not?
Jebus. Now not only do scientists have to…
clock | July 19, 2006Map projects regional population growth for 2025:
The number of people living within 60 miles (100 km) of a coastline is "expected to increase by 35 percent over 1995 population levels, exposing 2.75 billion people worldwide to the effects of sea level rise and other coastal threats posed by global warming," according to a new map showing projected population change for the year 2025.
It's 2025. Where Do Most People Live?:
The map indicates that the greatest increases in population density through 2025 are likely to occur in areas of developing countries that are already quite densely…
clock | July 17, 2006The latest question in the Ask A ScienceBlogger series is actually not that easy to answer, though some have, so far, valiantly tried:
Is every species of living thing on the planet equally deserving of protection?...
My attempt at the answer is under the fold....
My first knee-jerk answer is "Yes, of course!" Then comes a qualification: "As much as we can". I guess I could just leave it at that.
But why do I think that? Why people who answer with a more-or-less guarded 'Yes' think that way? Apparently, and I cannot now think of the source where I read this taxonomy (Google found this),…
clock | July 16, 2006Chris Clarke is equally surprised. At this rate, we'll have a tropical rainforest there soon.