environment
grrlscientist | April 6, 2006April 5, 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
written by Shelley Bluejay Pierce
freelance writer from Bozeman, Montana
ORANGE COUNTY, FLORIDA- A peaceful day golfing in Florida brought humans face to face with two Red Shouldered Hawks defending their nesting area. In Orange County Florida, this past week brought human-wildlife conflict to a head that left the two hawks dead and federal wildlife agents in turmoil over how the issue was handled.
After more than a dozen human attacks, the red shouldered hawks were killed by shotgun blasts Wednesday morning at the Villas of Grand Cypress Golf Resort…
pharyngula | April 4, 2006We have a little war going on in this thread. Some people are arguing that we shouldn't assume human beings are the most important creatures bar none around, while other people are angry that Eric Pianka would have such high regard for other organisms on Earth and would urge us to make room and restrict our population.
I'm personally more sympathetic to the egalitarian view that denies humanity a privileged position, except in our own personal esteem, but OK, let's play the game. Let's assume that human beings are the most important, most precious, most essential species on the entire planet—…
grrlscientist | April 3, 2006The Carnival of the Green is a new blog carnival for me, and probably for you, too. It is a weekly blog festival that discusses Green Politics and sustainability issues, and shares ideas for living in a more earth-friendly way. The 21st edition was published today with 14 interesting essays, including one written by me.
tags: blog carnival
pharyngula | April 2, 2006I'm getting some email requests to state my opinion on some claims by Forrest M. Mims. Mims attended a talk by Eric Pianka, in which he claims Pianka advocated the "slow and torturous death of over five billion human beings." I wasn't there, and I don't know exactly what was said, but I will venture a few opinions and suggestions.
Read Wesley Elsberry, who does know Pianka's work and has his own take on the interpretation of the talk.
I assure you that biologists do not have a secret plan to deliberately murder nine-tenths of the planet's human beings in order to make room for more bacteria.…
grrlscientist | April 2, 2006Oxygen-starved patches found within the world's oceans and coastal regions apparently trigger the development of more male than female fishes, reveals a recently released study by Rudolf Wu and colleagues at the City University of Hong Kong. This study not only has dire implications for the future of fish populations, but it also suggests that hypoxic conditions -- water containing less than 2.8 milligrams of oxygen per liter -- may be interacting directly with the hormones of the reproductive system, experts say.
Wu and his colleagues studied a common and easily-kept freshwater fish, the…
ksharpe | March 31, 2006Here's some jollity, just in time for Friday. Chevrolet has launched a promotion in which people visit a website and use online modules to create a 30-second advertising spot for the Chevy Tahoe SUV.
The early entries might not have been what Chevy corporate was hoping for.
More screenshots and links after the break.
Early entrants of the Chevy Tahoe: The Apprentice contest vented their spleen about the Tahoe's contributions to global warming, the United States' continued reliance on foreign oil, and their perception of SUVs, and SUV drivers and manufacturers, as arrogant, selfish, and…
grrlscientist | March 16, 2006Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
-- Carl SaganA trio of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, Campephilus principalis.
Adult male (left) and female (lower right).
Painting by John James Audubon (1785-1851).
With every day that passes, the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker looks more like an apparition or, more likely, a case of mistaken identity. Bird artist and ID expert, David Sibley, and several of his colleagues, Louis Bevier, Michael Patten, and Chris Elphick, published a rebuttal that was released today at 2pm EST by the top-tier journal, Science (this rebuttal should be accessible…
grrlscientist | March 13, 2006
The short story: it's melting!!Meltwater stream flowing into a large moulin in the ablation zone
(area below the equilibrium line) of the Greenland ice sheet.
Photo by Roger J. Braithwaite, The University of Manchester, UK.
Well, despite the fact that the George Bush Gang has been shushing scientists who dare to disagree with his administration's fantastical world view, now an entire governmental agency has come out and stated that global warming is occurring.
Two studies were recently published, documenting changes in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, confirming that climate warming…
grrlscientist | March 9, 2006
Klamath River, Oregon.
Photo by Dave Menke, USFWS.
Click on image for a MUCH larger view in its own window.
Do you wonder what happened with that online letter to the US Senate that I posted to my blog awhile ago, soliciting scientists' signatures regarding the upcoming rewrite of the 1973 Endangered Species Act (ESA)?
I finally have some good news to share with you.
As some of you might remember, the 1973 ESA is currently being considered for reauthorization by congress, and a rewrite by California Congressman Richard Pombo, a Republican who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee,…
pharyngula | March 3, 2006Darksyde's latest Science Friday is an interview with Michael Grunwald on the subject of the Florida Everglades. It's a mostly bad news with threads of forlorn hope scattered throughout, like most environmental news.
The bad news is that the ecosystem is in a state of near-collapse. Lake Okeechobee is going to hell; it's the color of espresso. The Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuaries are just gross. And CERP is already way over budget, behind schedule, and off track; Congress is losing interest in funding it. The good news is that there are signs that Floridians are beginning to recognize…
pharyngula | February 27, 2006We shouldn't be surprised when the Bush administration jiggers the scientific books:
In short, Oregon State University scientists reported in Science magazine that some logging practices may contribute to forest fires, rather than curbing them as conventional wisdom leads us to believe. The report ran contrary to current federal policy under the Bush administration, and the funding for the research group was suspended.
When reality conflicts with your ideology, it must be reality that's in error.
pharyngula | February 6, 2006Bush/Gore, Bore/Gush, they were both the same, remember? It didn't matter whether you voted Democrat or Republican, you were just getting the same ol' thing.
Look how true that is: Bush sounds just like Al Gore. Of course, there were a few minor differences, like that Gore was 14 years ahead of Bush, really meant it (rather than having his lackeys issue retractions the day after), and I suspect, had the competence to actually follow through.
pharyngula | February 6, 2006
Last week, the opening convocation for Black History Month was given by Tyrone Hayes of UC Berkeley. I was impressed: he's exceptionally personable, and despite the poor organization of his visit (UMM's fault, entirely) and having to drive for hours through a small blizzard to get here from the airport, he was gracious and fun to talk with. He gave a phenomenally well-organized, lucid talk which managed to describe all the basics of his research in terms a lay audience, most of whom were not science majors of any kind, could comprehend. And as I learned, most of his work is done by…
grrlscientist | February 1, 2006tags: Environment, tsunami, earthquake, Indonesia, Mangrove, Shrimp Farming
Note: Originally published on 2 January 2005. Nominated for the 2005 Koufax Award for "Best Individual Post".
Indonesian Mangrove.
All the survivors agreed that 26 December 2004 was an idyllic morning, indeed, it was a perfect morning, in spite of the earthquake. This earthquake was triggered within an interval of a few seconds when the Indian tectonic plate suddenly plunged 20 meters (60 feet) under the Burmese tectonic plate along the Sunda Trench. This submarine jolt caused the Burmese plate and the lands…
pharyngula | January 20, 2006DarkSyde has another of his Science Friday interviews on dKos—this time with the gang at Real Climate.
pharyngula | January 16, 2006Chris Clarke sees that we're Abandoning NOLA in Orion:
"[W]hile encouraging city residents to return home and declaring for the media audience that "we will do whatever it takes" to save the city, the President... formally refused the one thing New Orleans simply cannot live without: A restored network of barrier islands and coastal wetlands."
Leiter reports on the human catastrophe and the same shortsightedness:
The Army Corps of Engineers is still not doing anything on stopping the loss of the coastal littoral. Before Katrina, Louisiana lost some 40 miles of coastline over the last three…
emjohnson | November 1, 2005Reprinted from Wildlife Conservation Magazine
"Behind Enemy Lines"
November/December 2005
By Eric Michael Johnson
December 2002 -- After four days traveling upriver in a dugout canoe, Belgian primatologist Jef Dupain became the first researcher in five years to return to the war-torn Lomako Forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo). As he surveyed the overgrown field station that had once been his home, a boy soldier wielding an AK-47 stepped into view from a concealing tangle of vines. Fortunately the boy was only one of the rebel fighters who had escorted Dupain…