Envoronment
Tomorrow's Table
Alan Alda, actor, talks about communicating science. Alan Alda, award-winning actor and visiting professor at the Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, talks about his experiences with communicating science to the general public. Looking to close the gap between the scientific community and the public,...
Stoat
Airbourne fraction (again, again) Still no new science (is there any? Jules and James didn't find much to post about at EGU), but Tamino posted on AF, which prompted me to look up some of my earlier posts. Tamino shows the CO2 growth rate...
April 28, 2011
Class M
A roadmap to clean living What if we could avoid hundreds of thousand of deaths, billions of dollars in crop losses and trillions of dollars in healthcare expenditures simply by spreading off-the-shelf technology and industrialized-world regulations to developing nations? Oh, and along the way, we'd...
Tetrapod Zoology
The 'Great bubalus' in ancient African rock art While chasing up sivathere stuff, I got distracted. Sorry. Among the most spectacular of extinct bovids is the Plio-Pleistocene African form Pelorovis, famous for its gigantic curved horns. These can span 3 m in fossil skulls, and were certainly even...
April 27, 2011
Greg Laden's Blog
Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 21: The chickens come home to roost edition Main current concerns: Collapse of storage pools; H explosion; Livestock deaths; Mayoral despair; Leaking water; NPA judges.
April 26, 2011
Casaubon's Book
It Isn't Gridcrash that Makes the Lights Go Out April is the month that utility shut-offs are resumed in much of the northern half of the country - it is against the law to shut off people's primary heating fuel during the winter, but when they can't pay their bills, generally speaking, April 1 means that you can cut them off. There has been some upheaval in our area, where an unusually cold spring has meant that there is still a need for supplemental heating, and many poor people with very cold houses.
Casaubon's Book
Efficiency, Substitution and Innovation isn't All It is Cracked Up to Be If you erase the history of how abundant cheap energy has made possible scientific innovation and technological progress, and think that these are purely academic and intellectual accomplishments, springing from the head of Zeus without any inconvenient dirty contact with the oil, gas and coal below, then it is easy to believe that in an era of declining resources progress will move as swiftly as before. If you choose to see the resource base below it, however, that changes that view.
A Few Things Ill Considered
Another week of GW News, April 24, 2011 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup...
April 25, 2011
Casaubon's Book
10 Ways to Go Seriously Green I promise this is the only "Top 10 Green" List I'll ever make you read!
Tetrapod Zoology
What happened with that Sumerian 'sivathere' figurine after Colbert's paper of 1936? Well, a lot. I don't do requests on Tet Zoo, but when enough people ask me about the same thing it does get into my head. Ever since the early days of ver 1 people have been asking me about late-surviving sivatheres....
Tomorrow's Table
Congratulation to our student champions, Malinee and Merry Merry Mou won first place in the Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship
Casaubon's Book
Revisiting the Riot for Austerity Our actions make their world less habitable. Our consumption leaves less for our posterity. This is wrong - and it is based on a fundamental lie. We must find a way to change our lives, not so much because it might save us from the worst consequences of our behavior - might spare us the floods, the heat waves, the hurricanes, the tropical diseases - that's just getting out of the logical consequences. Instead, we have to change our ways because they are wrong, and we should do right instead.
Casaubon's Book
So That's Why Climate Denialism is So Successful... Kurt Cobb has a very funny essay that argues that plants and animals have joined with the climate denialists to bring about the better for them "World Without Us": The reversal of strategy began when domestic cats and dogs watched...
Casaubon's Book
Bangladeshi Adapting In Place As part of their ongoing series on population, National Geographic has a fascinating, and typically visually brilliant article about how the Bangladeshi population is using strategies of adaptation to deal with climate change. This isn't the kind of adaptation most...
April 24, 2011
Tomorrow's Table
Spring in California The garden is freshly mulched, with massive amounts of weeds fed to the hens. The irrigation turned on. We are ready for the summer heat.
April 22, 2011
Starts With A Bang
Happy Earth Day, 2011 Edition! "We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth." -Bill Anders, Apollo 8 Astronaut This Earth Day, I think -- for anyone interested in space, astronomy, or the Universe...
Casaubon's Book
What It is Like to Live in a Developed Nation Struggling with Food Issues One of the things I like about this article is that it is very clear about the issues that arise from both perception and actual contamination and shortfall. Those things are sometimes separable with various strategies, but more often they are deeply intertwined.
Uncertain Principles
More Fun With Fracking I intended to do a big book-sales post today, but our DSL modem may be dead, so there was no Internet in Chateau Steelypips this morning, and I forgot to copy the relevant files onto a thumb drive, so it...
Casaubon's Book
Open Farm Days!!! Ok, have you always wanted to come to see the farm? Here's your chance. On Sunday, May 22, we're having an open farm day from 10am to 4pm at our place at 43 Crow Hill Road Delanson, NY 12053. We're...
Casaubon's Book
Nicole Foss Overview of the Fukushima Situation I've been very grateful for my colleague Greg Laden's regular updates of the raw discussions on the Fukushima situation, but it is nice to have a coherent, visual overview, and Nicole Foss has provided another wonderful analysis at The Automatic...
Tetrapod Zoology
A future for vesper bats? (vesper bats part XX - last in series) Over the course of the previous 19 - yes, 19 - articles we've looked at the full diversity of vesper bat species (see links below if there are any parts you've missed). If you've been following the series on...
April 21, 2011
Greg Laden's Blog
Japan nuke news 20: Tokyo Electric: "fuel may have melted" Tokyo Electric officials have noted that they can not rule out the possibility that fuel rods in the Fukushima reactors have melted, at least to some extent. No one else, as far as I can tell, thinks that fuel rods have not melted. A Question...
Tetrapod Zoology
Bird predation, sexual segregation and fission-fusion societies: the amazing noctules (vesper bats part XIX) I find myself astonished by the fact that I've done it. With the publication of this article I've succeeded in providing a semi/non-technical overview of all the vesper bats of the world... or, of all the major lineages, anyway....
April 20, 2011
Tetrapod Zoology
Pipistrelles proper: little bats that glide, sing, swarm and lek (vesper bats part XVIII) Among the best known, most widespread and most familiar of vesper bats are the pipistrelles. All bats conventionally regarded as pipistrelles are small (ranging from 3-20 g and 35-62 mm in head-body length), typically with proportionally short, broad-based ears...
Mike the Mad Biologist
Staph in Food: Reservoirs of Resistance and the Need to Embiggen Research To understand reservoirs of resistance, let's settle the issue and really fund this thing.
