Environment/nature
ddobbs | October 23, 2006Amid my guilt at not writing more on avian flu myself, I note well this typically excellent post from Effect Measure, pondering: Why so little word lately of bird flu? Its issues intersect, in a very rough way, with those raised about science journalism by Janet Stemwedel, James Hrynyshyn and Jonah Lehrer.
I won't go here into why lousy science journalism happens. But the bird flu issue illustrates another problem in science (and other) journalism, which is the lack of coverage sometimes given to important stories. The publishing industry, particularly the newsier part, generally values…
ddobbs | September 25, 2006
Red-cockaded woodpeckers, by Earl Lincoln Poole, from Harold Bailey's Birds of Virginia, 1913; via Wikipedia Commons.
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North Carolina landowners are clearcutting pine forests to make sure those pesky red-cockaded woodpeckers don't set up shop, according to this depressing, distressing report in today's Times.
BOILING SPRING LAKES, N.C., Sept. 23 (AP) — 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…
ddobbs | September 18, 2006
Avian flu outbreaks in spring 2006, Paris to Georgia. From Declan Butler's new Google Earth time-series maps.
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Nature reporter Declan Butler, who has done some of best reporting on avian flu and (separately) the use of the internet as a means of communicating science, has updated his superb Google Earth avian flu maps to use Google Earth's new time series function. The resulting maps are both beautiful and even more informative and striking than before. The dynamics of the flu's spread are more clear, and…
ddobbs | August 17, 2006It's good to see NASA hasn't completely abandoned its mandate to look after the home planet. As its Earth Observatory notes:
Among the casualties of the conflict between Lebanon and Israel in the summer of 2006 was the Mediterranean. Israeli raids in mid-July on the Jiyyeh Power Station released thousands of tons of oil along the Lebanese coast, perhaps rivaling the Exxon Valdex accident in 1989. By August 8, the spill covered approximately 120 kilometers (75 miles). The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) flying onboard NASA’s Terra satellite took this picture on August 15…
ddobbs | July 17, 2006I enjoy most any mix of science and mountaineering — part of why I so like Mark Bowen's Thin Ice, his book about climatologist Lonnie Thompson's remarkable work documenting global warming in high-altitude glaciers. Scientific work done at rarefied altitudes. How can you not like it?
The North Face of the Eiger, 2005 — aka the Eigerwand of climbing fame. The east face, photos of which I couldn't find, is out of sight around the corner.
Photo by Dirk Beyer via Wikipedia Commons.
I'm less thrilled to see global warming meet alpinism on the Eiger, where last Thursday about 400,000 cubic…