environment
pharyngula | July 14, 2006Hug a lungfish!
I've had about 8 requests for further information on saving the Australian lungfish. That's a good start, and thanks to everyone who wrote in, but it's not enough. Look at that beautiful finny beast to the right; do you want them all to die? And seriously, look at those fins: aren't they spectacular? Don't you want to know how they develop and how they evolved?
The Australian government is planning to dam the last rivers on which these spectacular vertebrates live, and that will be it for them. We'll be left with nothing but bones and tissue samples and few relics in aquaria…
scientificactivist | June 28, 2006Yesterday, the AP released a story describing the general approval within the scientific community of the science behind Al Gore's new documentary An Inconvenient Truth
The AP contacted more than 100 top climate researchers by e-mail and phone for their opinion. Among those contacted were vocal skeptics of climate change theory. Most scientists had not seen the movie, which is in limited release, or read the book.
But those who have seen it had the same general impression: Gore conveyed the science correctly; the world is getting hotter and it is a manmade catastrophe-in-the-making caused by…
scientificactivist | June 22, 2006The National Academies today released their report on Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years. The verdict? "High confidence that planet is warmest in 400 years; less confidence in temperature reconstructions prior to 1600." The reviews from around the web are equally mixed, although generally agreeing that the report vindicates Mann's hockey stick model. Tim Lambert offers a round-up of them over at Deltoid.
I also noticed one familiar name in the list of the report's authors: Gerald North (the committee's chair), who's a meteorology professor at my alma mater,…
clock | June 20, 2006For a particularly juicy manner of dealing with a global warming denier (and general wackjob) Dennis Prager, read Amanda's delicious rant: Gasbag expands as global temperatures rise.
clock | June 19, 2006Want this badge?
The 32nd edition of the Carnival of the Green is now up on Savvy Vegetarian.
clock | June 15, 2006Al Gore's movie is opening locally tomorrow (though not in the theater up the street) and I am really looking forward to seeing it. I have just read what is, in my opinion, the best review of the movie: Brokeback Earth by Godfrey Cheshire. It is long but well worth your time.
The first page or so is actually about the movie, about the science behind the movie and about Al Gore himself. The latter part, where it starts delving into politics is perhaps the best. Here is just a tiny little excerpt to whet your appetites:
.........snip............
By my not entirely scientific calculations…
pharyngula | June 14, 2006That Stephen Hawking guy is saying that we need to get colonies out there in space to preserve the human race. I'm a space opera fan, I think space exploration is a worthy endeavor, but I have to admit that watching Chris Clarke whomp on Hawking is very entertaining, and I agree. Hawking has it all wrong.
When fans of technology start preaching about escaping disaster on earth by setting up space stations and moon colonies and terraforming Mars, an image comes to mind: a dying hanged man, kicking and squirming, ejaculating reflexively and dribbling a few pitiful drops of semen into the dirt.…
clock | June 11, 2006
Welcome to the thirty-first edition of the Carnival of the Green. I am still trying to figure out the details of Movable Type after my move here last Friday (and please look around - there are 45 fantastic science bloggers here at SEED's ScienceBlogs), so fancy graphics and creative hosting will have to wait for some other time. Let's just take a straightforward look at this week's entries.
Is it sexual repression that's behind the religious right's obsession with gay marriage? Or are they just plain evil? Either way, they are using it to distract us from the far more serious issue of…
pharyngula | June 10, 2006
To continue a bit of theme, I mentioned that there were some different ways to approach biology, and that old-school systematists with their breadth of knowledge about the diversity of life are getting harder and harder to find. This is something I also bring up in my introductory biology course, where we discuss how biologists do their work, and I mention that one distinction you can find (which is really a continuum and frequently breached) is that there are bench scientists and field scientists, and they differ in multiple ways. Bench scientists tend to be strongly reductionist, tend to…
pharyngula | June 10, 2006
Ah, the libertarian extremists have found my site and are making comments. It's a peculiar pathology that thinks environmentalism is an evil plot, that planning is communism/socialism, and that Jesus was a good capitalist. It is particularly irksome to try and deal with people who are so far gone that they deny science warning them of environmental dangers and impending problems.
How irksome? Imagine that a scientist and one of these deranged libertarian right-wing anti-environmentalist science deniers go out for a drive one day...
LIB: Isn't this wonderful? I have a desire to drive, and…
clock | June 9, 2006Want this badge?
Carnival of the Green has nothing really to do with the Green Party, but is a blog carnival that focuses on sustainability, ecology and conservation.
Next week, June 12th, the carnival will be hosted by me, right here on my new digs! I hope that means more exposure for all the entrants.
Check out the archives of previous editions of Carnival of the Green and see if you have written (or can write) something that fits with the theme.
You can send your entries to: carnivalofgreen AT gmail DOT com, or directly to me at: Coturnix1 AT aol DOT com. I'd like to have all the entries…
pharyngula | May 15, 2006Our Seed Overlords have submitted yet another question to their blogulous oracle, i.e., us: Will the "human" race be around in 100 years?
I don't think it's a particularly good question, I'm afraid. The answer is simply "yes". If the question were about prairie chickens, cheetahs, or chimpanzees, it would be a more challenging question, but with a population of 6.5 billion of us, I don't think there's much doubt. We'll be here. The only question is what state we and the world will be in. I'll speculate a bit on possible outcomes.
We keep going as we have been. The population is double what it…
melinda wenner | May 9, 2006Organic foods from your supermarket may comply with the requirements of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Organic Program, but are you really buying what you think you're buying?
Many people "go organic" because they want to buy family-farmed, locally-operated produce. But as Steven Shapin points out in the New Yorker, most organic food sold in grocery stores is anything but. Earthbound Farm, a major organic produce supplier for Whole Foods, has projected revenues for 2006 of more than $450 million, and farms more than 26,000 acres. Doesn't sound so quaint anymore, does it.
What'…
grrlscientist | May 2, 2006What do you think of when you hear the phrase, "Dust Bowl"? Like most people, I learned about the Dust Bowl in my high school history class. But even though I attended high school last century (iieee!), as I recall, my textbook devoted perhaps one paragraph to this event before moving on to other, more important events, such as the stock market crash and the banking failure, the Great Depression, Roosevelt's New Deal, and World War II. In fact, except for my astonished sadness after reading John Steinbeck's literary rant, The Grapes of Wrath, I never gave the actual event much thought.…
cmims | April 21, 2006
When I hear "glacier" I think of words like "fjord" and "Greenland."
It's easy to forget that there are some not so far away from us, rapidly receding like most of their brethren.
Ex seed staffer done good Ted Alvarez visited one of them, in Canada's icefield parkway, and brought back some stunning shots:
Canada's Icefields Parkway: 250 Kilometers of Solitude
Canada's Icefields Parkway: Pure Backcountry Front Country
grrlscientist | April 21, 2006
The Nature Conservancy has set up a webpage where you can make a difference on Earth Day 2006 by sharing a message of hope for the planet. When you share your Earth Day message, you'll become part of the Conservancy's free online community, the Great Places Network. Also, your message may be highlighted on The Nature Conservancy's website to inspire others to make a difference!
Plus, you can download The Nature Conservancy's new nature image screensaver filled with nature photos.
Disclaimers: I do not receive anything for mentioning this here except satisfaction from sharing this…
lee billings | April 21, 2006On the lighter side, not everyone is sad that polar bears might be going away. Seed actually located one of these individuals and asked what he thinks about drowning polar bears.
His reaction is below the fold.
I've never seen a seal so happy.
lee billings | April 21, 2006As a followup to my post about abandoned walrus calves, here is a nifty plugin for Google Earth that allows anyone to track the movements of radio-tagged walruses in the Arctic.
The page is in Danish, but I think ScienceBlogs readers are smart enough to figure out how to download and use this stuff. Many thanks to Lief Toudal Pederson of the Danish Center for Remote Sensing for putting together this data and making it available to the world - this is only one of his many impressive projects.
lee billings | April 21, 2006There's been a lot of justified hullabaloo recently over the fate of Arctic polar bears. You see, they're drowning in record numbers as their habitat, in an eyeblink, drastically changes from the ice floes they've known for thousands of years to open ocean. The only possible good news taken this terrible situation is that they might be added to the US federal government's endangered species list, which would theoretically obligate the government to enforce reduction of US CO2 emissions to preserve the polar bear habitat. But that's wishful thinking. If worldwide uproar and scientific…