Category Archives: environment

Salps! Seriously, Salps!

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I had never heard of salps before a few days ago reading a post on Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution Is True blog, but they’re neat as hell and I just read another article about them on Science Daily, so I figured it would be nice to share the information.

Salps are chordates, despite they fact that they look like jellyfish, and they’re turning out to be a lot more important than we had thought. According to the Science Daily article, researchers are starting to see that the humble salp makes some very important poop.
We always knew (and by “we” I clearly mean “people who know things about salps”) that they ate phytoplankton. However, the research is showing that they most likely eat particles that are a whole lot smaller than that: Continue reading →

Fear Of The Unknown And The Plight Of The Poor

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We as a species are very much defined by the fear of the unknown. This is, for the record, normal, and I’m not in any way advocating that we stop being afraid of the unknown. One of the things that has led to our survival as a species and as individuals is selectively listening to that fear. But at the same time, we have (or should have) a thirst for knowledge that leads the unknown to become knowable. Where does the line exist? I’d be a fool to speculate.

Religion comes in large part from fear of the unknown. When we are presented with things we do not know, it is easy to turn to a god figure who will answer the question for us. What happens when we die? Why did the volcano erupt? Why did the crops this season do so well? All of these questioned we have traditionally answered with religion and with an emphasis on how well we have behaved. But that’s just one example of how we deal with this fear of the unknown.

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So Let Me Get This Straight

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Your argument, if I’m understanding correctly, is that a creator, who we’ll call God for the purposes of this conversation but who could just as easily be called any number of names, triggered the Big Bang as a means to create a suitable universe for us to live in. Am I following you correctly? Okay, now I have a few thoughts.

We know that the universe has certain laws that are true everywhere. Some of these we know already, others presumably are bigger or smaller than we can currently see. Nothing strays from these laws. Everything can be traced back to that Big Bang, but if that is the case then what is the point of faith? If God put every single ounce of truth that defines the universe into that initial explosion, somehow able to imagine how he could get from a big sack of nothing all the way to an entire universe full of things, allowing for all the amazing things that need to be in place in order for the earth to exist in a way that would sustain life, allowing for all the things on earth that need to be in place for humanity to appear, and allowing for all the things that took place in human history to lead to you and I having this conversation, then why do we assume that he has any capacity to change anything?

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Three Cheers For British Petroleum!

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I touched on this briefly yesterday, but today I wanted to go into greater detail. I for one am tired of all the negative nellies misunderstanding what BP has done in Louisiana, and damnit, I’m gonna say my piece. All of you Johnny Bandwagon-Jumpers need to listen up, because I’m about to drop some knowledge.

First off, this is all a question of how you look at things. Yes, you can call it an environmental holocaust, but why do we always resort to terror buzzwords whenever businesses do anything? Remember New Coke? The public were practically screaming that it was made of clubbed seals and the rendered fat of war criminals, which admittedly is not far off the taste, but still very reactionary.

No, I prefer to think of this as BP opening up their business to a new customer base. And like many businesses, to drum up support they have offered their product or service free of charge in the beginning. When a new Starbucks opens up, you’re sure to see barristas in the neighborhood with free samples, and goodness knows crack dealers are notorious for their “first hit  free” marketing ploy.

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My Take On Global Warming

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Damn this weather. After a couple of days of really pretty weather, we’re stuck in mad wind and blowing wet snow today. May was not meant for snow no matter what anyone tells you, and I for one am a big grump today because of it. Days like today make me dream of a warm beach and a cold drink. But the reality of my life means that despite being such an awesome blogger, I can’t just jet-set off to Belize whenever I like to escape the cold. I know, life’s weird, huh? But now I’m thinking of warmer, and that led me to warming, and I thought I’d weigh in on the topic.

I’m not a climatologist and wouldn’t have the first clue how to determine if the data is accurate or not. There’s a lot of math and science involved in interpreting the information that is simply beyond me. That’s why climatologists have to go to school. The collecting and interpreting of this information is a scientific process. In the same regard that I wouldn’t expect them to just pick up a computer and start building complicated web applications as laypeople, it’s equally silly to assume that I’d be able to pick up their data sets and determine what is true and what is not.

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Peein’ In The Shower

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I’ll admit it, I pee in the shower. I don’t pee on myself and I do it down the drain so it’s not all gross. And the reason I do? Because cute Brazilian children sang me a song.

Okay, I can see you’re confused. Once upon a time, I saw a link to this ad and it made me giggle. The Brazilians put together the advertisement to encourage people to pee in the shower. You see, if you can cut down the amount of water wasted in flushing the toilet once a day for most of the population, that’s a dramatic amount of water saved. It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s one of those small things you can do to save resources.

It works on the same principal as when you were a kid and working in a fast food restaurant. If you ever make the mistake of putting more than one napkin per sandwich or one straw per drink in the bag, your manager will be right there yelling at you with something that sounds a bit like “Each napkin costs five cents. If every McDonalds order had an extra napkin in it, that would translate to an extra cost of $9.2 million per year!” Of course, those numbers aren’t accurate, I was illustrating the point.

So do it, people. Pee in the shower. Be proud of the little things we can do to save the environment.

Jim

Go Ahead, Throw the Chip Bag Away.

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screen-shot-2010-02-23-at-100108-pmI was just sitting back, enjoying some wine and watching a little Rick Mercer Report. A commercial break starts and I see that Sunchip’s has just released a 100% biodegradable chip bag.

Someone finally got it right! I’m not saying this is going to solve our environmental problems , but it’s the kind of commercially available product I’m very happy to see.

So way to go Sunchip’s. I already liked ya, but now i love ya.

Climate Change Denial Strikes Again

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I’m sure you’ve already heard about this, but the great James Randi has posted his stance on climate change, and surprised a lot of skeptics by coming out on the side of the denialists. He admits throughout his post that he’s not an expert on the topic, and I can relate. I’m no expert either. I’ve never studied climatology, and my opinion on the topic is based on the consensus of experts. This might seem like a cop-out, but the truth is that none of us has the ability to know everything about everything. We choose which side to take on issues like this based on a variety of factors, not the least of which should be the opinion of the majority of actual experts. PZ Myers has a great commentary on the reasoning behind Randi’s statements, so I won’t belabor that point, but I recommend you read it.

To that end, I believe that global warming is a real phenomenon, and one that poses a significant threat. And I work in an industry largely populated by people with a vested interest in promoting the denialist perspective. I’ve heard their arguments, and I’ve found them to be generally self-serving and full of spin.

There is truth to the argument that we don’t have the full picture. Weather is a complicated thing, and we don’t fully understand the way it fluctuates. However, it seems to me that we want to err on the side of caution. And I think this video sums it up nicely.

Great News From Brazil

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It’s not often in my memory that we get good news about deforestation from Brazil, but I’d say this qualifies. I read an article today on Science Daily called The End of Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon? which talks about the dramatic changes that have occurred in the region. Through a combination of market forces and a much more strict government stance, the amount of forestry has, according to this paper, dropped dramatically.

And that’s good news. From an early age, my generation were told about the horrors of deforestation in South America, and how that deforestation was bringing about massive ecological changes. The term “the lungs of the planet” was one I heard a lot as a kid, and I imagined the lungs being riddled with man-made cancers that we had to fight, a battle which, as I aged, I understood would be difficult due to the complex economics involved. However, the article tells us we’ve turned a corner in that regard:

Brazil has lowered deforestation rates 64 percent since 2005. This remarkable achievement was possible through a government crack-down on illegal activities in the region. It was helped by a retraction of the cattle and soybean industries, and a growing effort to exclude deforesters from the beef and soy markets. The article describes how Brazil could build upon this progress to end forest clearing by the year 2020, and the additional funding that will be required to reach this goal.

There’s more, but read it from the horse’s mouth.¬† It’s definitely hopeful words.

Jim

Two Interesting Articles About Green Energy

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I just read a couple of interesting articles from Science Daily about energy and thought I’d share them.

The first article is about a group of researchers who have managed to find a much more efficient means of generating hydrogen through photosynthesis. Hydrogen as a gas is very intriguing in terms of the war on greenhouse gasses, but there have been technical difficulties in finding a way to generate it efficiently. However:

Bruce and his colleagues found that by starting with a thermophilic blue-green algae, which favors warmer temperatures, they could sustain the reaction at temperatures as high as 55 degrees C, or 131 degrees F. That is roughly the temperature in arid deserts with high solar irradiation, where the process would be most productive. They also found the process was more than 10 times more efficient as the temperature increased.

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