environment
esiegel | August 30, 2011"My girl, my girl, don't you lie to me,
tell me where did you sleep last night?
In the pines, in the pines, where the Sun don't ever shine,
I'll shiver the whole night through." -Leadbelly, among many other variations
It's already been a couple of months since I wrote about Global Warming, and was deluged with comments that (to be kind) objected to the scientific consensus that the Earth is getting warmer, and humans are very likely the cause.
So let's just take a look at the basic physics of how a warm object -- like a planet -- stays as warm as it does in a cold environment, like…
mikethemadbiologist | August 28, 2011Admittedly, some boycotts have worked: Glenn Beck seems to have been seriously harmed by the boycotts against his advertisers. But what happens when the corporations you want to boycott have massive market share? The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a corporate-backed lobbying group that has essentially written many laws at the state level, including Wisconsin, Florida, and Michigan. One-third of all state legislators (overwhelmingly Republican) are members of ALEC, and ALEC has pushed some really awful legislation, including limiting consumer rights, environmental…
jtoney | August 26, 2011
As I sit here in New Jersey, of which thousands of acres are under sea level, let us hope that Hurricane Irene does not unleash her wrath upon us hapless citizens...
If Hurricane Irene does hit us full force, would it look like this?
A recent article in Science, "Computational Physics in Film" reminded me how far we have advanced in computer simulation - all based upon basic physics of fluid dynamics.
Exoticmatter NAIAD City flood from Igor Zanic on Vimeo.
A spectacular example blending fluid dynamics and art: "Naiad City Flood":
Some of the most spectacular examples of physics in film…
mikethemadbiologist | August 25, 2011Sheril has the details:
That's what Florida Governor Rick Scott and the Republican-controlled Legislature just did. Embarrassing for Florida and a travesty for the Everglades.
They've dismantled the South Florida Water Management District-the state agency charged with protecting the Everglades. As The Sierra Club explains, this wasn't belt tightening, but an attack on science and more specifically an attack on Everglades restoration. Among the 280 employees laid off was Dr. Christopher McVoy, lead author of the recently published 576-page book Landscapes and Hydrology of the Predrainage…
pharyngula | August 22, 2011John Abraham, college professor, squares off against Lord Monckton, crank and poseur, in this lecture on the science of climate change. It's very good and fillets the silly old goose quite well.
(Also on FtB)
sastyk | August 1, 2011The Riot for Austerity came about this way. In 2007, after the release of the IPCC report, and a number of books drawing attention to climate change, a friend of mine and I were discussing our frustration that no political organization was considering any kind of emissions cuts that even resembled those necessary to limit the damage from climate change. In fact whenever we discussed the 90+% emissions cuts required to give us the best chance of a reasonable stable climate, the immediate reaction was "that's not going to happen!"
Stealing a great line from George Monbiot's wonderful book…
mikethemadbiologist | July 28, 2011David Wogan brings up an important point--if we're serious about global warming, we need to lower the amount of energy buildings use:
Consider this: according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, our nation's buildings consume over 40 percent of the energy consumed across all sectors - that is even more energy than consumed by the transportation sector (29 percent). And in our homes and apartments, nearly half (49 percent) of all energy is used for heating and cooling.
As he points out weatherization is something you can and should do to lower energy consumption. But there's…
jtoney | July 26, 2011
In the United States, if you have been convicted of a crime and are later exonerated, you may be faced with fewer benefits than those guilty of a crime after serving a full prison sentence. According to the Innocence Project:
...the exoneree may lack a source of income, a means of transportation, health coverage and a stable home.
HOWEVER:
If Anders Behring Breivik is convicted of the crimes from the massacre at Oslo - the murder of at least 68 innocent lives - he may face a very different fate. By some standards, he may be rewarded with the following conditions:
Given the numerous…
jhalper | July 23, 2011Today's science news from the Weizmann Institute covers research in neurobiology, environmental science and cancer immunology.
⢠In the first, scientists identified a likely biological marker for autism that shows up even in very young children. Diagnoses of autism are generally not possible so early, as the signs typically appear gradually throughout the first 3-4 years of life. The scientists used fMRI to scan the brains of children aged 1-3 who were just starting to show signs of autistic behavior. Their method: scanning the brains of toddlers while they sleep. It seems that even asleep…
jtoney | July 21, 2011Source, Vanessa Pike-Russell's Flickr photostream.
No, this is not a bizarre recipe. First, the good news. Extensive testing of seafood from the Gulf shows that "99%" are safe to eat, despite the fact that the fate of some one million barrels of oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig is unknown.
From Chemical & Engineering News:
...there almost never were any detectable findings of the dispersant in the fish flesh," Kraemer said. FDA and NOAA reported that all samples passed sensory testing and that LC/MS/MS showed no detectable residues in 99% of samples. For the 1% that tested…
esiegel | July 20, 2011"Almost every way we make electricity today, except for the emerging renewables and nuclear, puts out CO2. And so, what we're going to have to do at a global scale, is create a new system. And so, we need energy miracles." -Bill Gates
Energy is one of the most important topics facing our modern, industrialized civilization. What sources we get it from, what we use it for, and how we deal with the waste from its production are paramount to the future of our species on Earth.
Yet in many ways, energy is one of the most poorly understood quantities in all of physics. To help you better…
esiegel | July 18, 2011"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive." -C. S. Lewis
Many of you are a little bit skeptical that I talk about things like the History of the Universe, Inflation, Dark Matter and Dark Energy like they are absolute certainties. After all, isn't it true that there are an awful lot of assumptions that we make in order for these things to be true?
Image credit: NASA.
Absolutely!
That's right, I admit it. We make assumptions when we come up…
jtoney | July 12, 2011The 3D reconstruction [(A) to (E)] of coxa (green) and trochanter (yellow) of left hind leg of T. oblongus. (A) Depressed position. (B) Elevated position. (C) Coxa cut horizontally along rotation axis; dorsal aspect of trochanter while leg depressed. (D). Isolated trochanter showing external spiral thread and tendon (t). (E) Dorsal portion of coxa corresponding to ventral portion of (C). (F) Scanning electron microscope photograph of the right metatrochanter showing posterior condyle (c) and external spiral thread (e).
This stunning image reveals for the first time that beetles use a screw…
pharyngula | July 12, 2011When I was in London last month, Richard Dawkins and I had a public conversation sponsored by the British Humanist Association, and now you can watch it wherever.
And here's the Q&A:
jtoney | July 11, 2011
If it's too loud nearby a river in Paris, you can blame M. scholtzi singing a raucous love song, exclusively by males wooing females.
From National Geographic Daily News:
{Note: A loud rock concert is at about 115 decibels...}
Engineers and evolutionary biologists in Scotland and France recorded the boatman--which is roughly the size of a grain of rice--"singing" in a tank. The aquatic insect's songs peaked at 105 decibels, roughly equivalent to the volume of a pounding jackhammer within arm's reach.
The chirps are loud enough that humans can hear the sounds while standing at the edge of a…
mikethemadbiologist | July 10, 2011Or something. A while ago, in "Michele Bachmann, Light Bulb Vigilantes, and the Dim Bulbs of the Tea Party", I described the fear that the psychiatric wing of the Republican Party (and its dominant wing) has towards more energy efficient light bulbs. This is what appears to drive that fear:
On her way out, Dee Hogan of Nashua told me she would gladly vote for Bachmann. "I don't appreciate that your next-door neighbor is going to start yelling at me, telling me to shut my lights off when they have that shut-your-lights-off thingee. I don't want people in my face, telling me what to do."
I…
jtoney | July 6, 2011
Cristina Grande and Nipam Patel
DIFFERENCES In this pair of land snails, the one on the right, with the shell opening on the right, is the more common of the species.
My children and I recently "caught" a mud snail off the coast of New Jersey, and it got me thinking...
I've always been fascinated that some snails have left-handed shells and others right-handed. Forgiving the "left/right" political belief reference, do you think it would be possible to nudge a snail towards one form over the other? If so, how could you do it?
I've been exploring this question as one of my research projects…
jtoney | July 1, 2011
Photo source su-lin's Flickr photostream
Millions of American families will be celebrating July 4 by grilling hamburgers and hot dogs before enjoying the evening's fireworks. This is a good opportunity to think about the real cost of that burger. Yes, burgers can make an inexpensive and fast meal, but they are the most costly choice, considering the impact on our environment - not to mention your health.
A recent study by Swedish scientists estimates that the energy cost of a classic McDonald's hamburger is more than three times that of a complete chicken dinner with potatoes, carrots and…
jtoney | June 29, 2011
Wolfram Meier-Augenstein
Tragic Trajectory Forensic researchers used this 14-cm lock of hair to map a dead man's route to the U.K.
Measuring isotopes has come a long way. Recent reports describe an emerging field of environmental forensics. Where did those illegal drugs come from? Is that $1,000 bottle of scotch the real deal?
According to Chemical & Engineering News:
An analytical chemist at James Hutton Institute, in Dundee, Scotland, Meier-Augenstein has pioneered a way to help determine where unidentified victims like this one lived or traveled. To do so, he measures the stable…
mikethemadbiologist | June 29, 2011Monday, The NY Times had an interesting story about Zurich, Switzerland's intentional policy of making car-based transportation utterly miserable--and thereby convincing people to use other transit options:
While American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow and offering apps to help drivers find parking, many European cities are doing the opposite: creating environments openly hostile to cars. The methods vary, but the mission is clear -- to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of…