environment
sarahdasher | October 27, 2006
When Tungurahua erupted earlier this month, three hundred local people were forced to evacuate. Tungurahua is the most active volcano in Ecuador, which is itself a volcanically active region.
This image, captured by NASA's Terra satellite on October 25, shows Tungurahua mid-eruption; a plume of dark, rather than white, volcanic ash blows westward from the summit, indicating that this blast was composed more of ash than steam.
Eruptions like this serve as a reminder that geologic time includes now.
More below the fold.
The Andes were formed by eruptions like this one. The Andes lie at the…
clock | October 22, 2006Still, it is strange to have a press release on a study before it even gets started:
Asia's Odd-ball Antelope Gets Collared:
A group of scientists led by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) working in Mongolia's windswept Gobi Desert recently fitted high-tech GPS (Global Positioning System) collars on eight saiga antelope in an effort to help protect one of Asia's most bizarre-looking -- and endangered -- large mammals.
purepedantry | October 20, 2006Hydrogen is great, but I feel like there are some structural and technical issues that have to be solved before...you know...the angels fly down to save us and hugs and bunnies abound. Popular Mechanics introduces a note of realism to the debate on alternative fuels with a great article on hydrogen fuel:
At first glance, hydrogen would seem an ideal substitute for these problematic fuels. Pound for pound, hydrogen contains almost three times as much energy as natural gas, and when consumed its only emission is pure, plain water. But unlike oil and gas, hydrogen is not a fuel. It is a way of…
j7uy5 | October 19, 2006No, it is not the name of a new rock band. It is a phenomenon
that is increasing in frequency in the world's oceans. The
dead zones are areas with very low oxygen content, so low that nothing
can live there.
Neil Barry Rincover, writing on
href="http://rincover.blogstream.com/v1/pid/137945.html">U.S.
Politics and Other Nonsense, brings us notice of a
report that the number of dead zones has increased by a third in the
past two years. There are now 200.
The study was sponsored by the Global Programme Action Global (GPA) for
the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-Based…
grrlscientist | October 18, 2006Failing to fight global warming now will cost trillions of dollars by the end of the century even without counting biodiversity loss or unpredictable events like the Gulf Stream shutting down, a study recently showed. But acting now will avoid some of the massive damage and cost relatively little, said the study commissioned by Friends of the Earth and the Global Development and Environment Institute of Tufts University in the United States.
Most scientists now agree average temperatures will rise by between two and six degrees Celsius by the end of the century, driven by so-called…
clock | October 18, 2006Since this is another one of the recurring themes on my blog, I decided to republish all of my old posts on the topic together under the fold. Since my move here to the new blog, I have continued to write about this, e.g., in the following posts:
Preserving species diversity - long-term thinkingHot boiled wine in the middle of the winter is tasty....Global Warming disrupts the timing of flowers and pollinatorsGlobal Warming Remodelling Ecosystems in Alaska
-----------------------------------------------
Clocks, Migration and the Effects of Global Warming (December 23, 2005)
Circadian systems…
grrlscientist | October 15, 2006Wealth accumulated by First World countries is largely based on riches taken from Third World countries. For example, the destruction of India's textile industry, the takeover of the spice trade, the genocide of native American tribes, and African slavery all served to fuel the Industrial Revolution. Below the fold is an interesting article that discusses the links between the accumulation of wealth concomitant with the over-exploitation of nature and how they cause poverty.
I am interested to read your reactions to this article, dear readers.
Two of the great economic myths of our time…
clock | October 14, 2006I love it when David Neiwert takes a break from Minutemen and White Pride and writes a post about killer whales. In this latest such post, he ties the concern for his favourite animals to Republican War On Science and the upcoming mid-term elections.
j7uy5 | October 9, 2006To be perfectly fair, I should note that not all Republicans are
opposed to protection of the environment. For example, there
is an organization known as
rel="tag">Republicans for Environmental Protection.
One of their members even published an editorial:
href="http://www.rep.org/opinions/op-eds/90.html">Conservation
Starts with Obeying the Law.
However, the Bush administration is opposed to such protections,
particularly when they get in the way of the energy industry's quest to
set new records in their quest for profits. Never mind their
lip service to "the rule of law."…
grrlscientist | October 6, 2006
We had a truly impressive lightning storm the other night here in NYC. So impressive that the nurses here at the hospital were all commenting about it. As a result, I was inspired to link to this Schoolhouse Rock primer about the weather.
Welcome everyone,
It's the weather show!
Bring your bathing suits,
Don't forget your boots and coats.
Folks, we guarantee the show that we perform
Is never dull, if there's a lull,
It's just the calm before the storm.
Watch it change from icy cold to toasty warm,
And rearrange from sunny days to crazy storms.
The curtain's rising, we're so glad to have…
clock | October 4, 2006In these days of global warming it is important to realize how important temperature is in regulation of a variety of biological processes. Here is today's sampler of examples:
Why Do Cold Animals Make Bigger Babies?:
Reproduction involves a critical decision: Should an organism invest energy in a few large offspring or many small ones? In a new study from the American Naturalist, biologists used a new statistical approach that can test multiple theories at the same time, an approach they hope will shed light on many evolutionary problems. They used data from many populations of Eastern…
scientificactivist | October 3, 2006What they clearly lack in substance, they attempt to make up for in style, but global warming denialists certainly aren't winning any points for class. In a September 25th speech in the Senate, Crazy Ol' James Inhofe--who once called global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" and who ironically serves as the chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee--attacked The New York Times' esteemed environmental reporter Andrew Revkin for what else but his new children's book The North Pole Was Here. "So here we have a very prominent environmental…
j7uy5 | October 2, 2006
href="http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2006/10/raise_the_gas_tax.php">Jonah
and
href="http://scienceblogs.com/nosenada/2006/10/if_we_did_raise_the_gas_tax_wh.php">Kevin
have already chipping in on this topic. Bob Lutz, the VP of
General Motors, turned a few heads. Not with an eye-catching
new auto design, but with a comment in the Wall Street Journal:
"I'd say the best thing the (U.S.) government can do
is to raise the
gas tax by 10 or 15 cents a year until it reaches European levels," Mr.
Lutz said, during an impromptu interview just before GM Europe's media
event last Thursday.…
j7uy5 | September 25, 2006This is a follow-up to yesterday's post. Yesterday, I pointed
out that the EPA ignored the advice of its own scientists in developing
new rules for fine particulate matter pollution. Now, we hear
what some of those experts have to say. Furthermore, they
point out that the EPA not only ignored expert advice, it did not even
follow the Clean Air Act.
Medpage Today has a
href="http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/EnvironmentalHealth/tb/4158">scathing
article about the response of the medical community to the
new EPA standards for PM2.5.
NEW YORK, Sept. 22 -- The Environmental…
j7uy5 | September 24, 2006Frank O'Donnell, writing at TomPaine.com,
has an article about the RWOS
as applied to clean air regulation. It turns out that the EPA
has developed new air quality standards for the control of particulate
matter pollution. But the new rules are not based upon the
advice of their scientists and the scientists they involved in the
process. The new standards are weaker than what was
recommended.
href="http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/09/21/tainted_science.php">Tainted
Science
Frank O'Donnell
September 21, 2006
...The issue at hand is the Bush administration’s decision on
particle…
clock | September 24, 2006Rare Woodpecker Sends Town Running for Chain Saws:
BOILING SPRING LAKES, N.C., (Sept. 24) -- Over the past six months, landowners here have been clear-cutting thousands of trees to keep them from becoming homes for the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker.
The chain saws started in February, when the federal Fish and Wildlife Service put Boiling Spring Lakes on notice that rapid development threatened to squeeze out the woodpecker.
The agency issued a map marking 15 active woodpecker "clusters," and announced it was working on a new one that could potentially designate whole neighborhoods of…
j7uy5 | September 20, 2006I'll be curious to see if there turns out to be a parallel between what
is happening now in the auto industry, and what happens in the future
in the computing industry.
We recently passed the 25th anniversary of the original IBM PC (
href="http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc25/pc25_intro.html">model
5150). Ever since then, computer marketing has been
oriented toward progressively faster, more capable machines.
Original IBM PC
photo from IBM archive
But now, we hear that
rel="tag">Intel is
href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/09/11/37NNintellayoffs_1.html">…
pharyngula | September 17, 2006The Dharma Bums have a new project: they're collecting photos from around the world that show how beautiful the world is, under the subject, "Good Planets are hard to find". If you've done some nature photography, send the pictures in.
clock | September 14, 2006From an e-mail:
The U.S. television premiere of the Academy Award-winning MARCH OF THE PENGUINS will be on Hallmark Channel, Saturday, November 25 (9/8 c).
The theatrical movie is accompanied by a never-before-seen film short on the subject from Academy Award-winners (director) Luc Jacquet, (producer) Emanuel Priou, (producer) Christophe Lioud and (producer) Yves Darondeau. The short will follow the premiere of the movie and will encore after the second run of the movie that same evening.
The little movie that walked away with film's most prized statue - the Academy Award - follows the…