Environment

Poplars have become popular for use in products like paper, pallets, plywood, furniture frames - even as a biofuel - because they grow quickly. But being natural doesn't mean being good for the environment. Poplars are a natural source of isoprene, which negatively affects regional air quality and can lead to higher levels of atmospheric aerosol production, more ozone in the air and longer methane life. Ozone and methane are n the category of greenhouse gases, and ozone is also listed as a respiratory irritant. It's not just poplar that produces isoprene in their leaves. So do oak…

To future scholars, the 2020s may be the decade that the public discovered epidemiologists don't understand the difference between a hazard, absolute risk, and relative risk. And that skepticism in the next decade will have resulted from too many shoddy claims and spurious correlations in this one. Though 16th century peasants during the time of Paracelsus readily understood that 'the dose makes the poison', our own National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS, who funded the new study in question) instead routinely claims that 'any pathogen is pathology' - that is to say that…

Scientists have discovered remnants of the world's oldest fossil forest in of all places, a sandstone quarry in Cairo, New York. It is believed the extensive network of trees is around 386 million years old and spread into Pennsylvania and beyond. This is not the first time New York had the oldest forest, the nearby Gilboa forest, 20 miles away, had the previous record at a few million years younger. Scientists analyzed 3,000 square meters of the forest at the abandoned quarry in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in the Hudson Valley and say that the forest was home to at least two…

You’ll often hear about the “Ice albedo effect” as a supposed tipping point that the IPCC is ignoring. The idea is that as the Arctic ice melts, it absorbs more heat from the sun, and so warms the planet. What they ignore is that as the planet warms there are also more clouds, especially in tropical regions. This did seem a possibility in the 1980s, and Margaret Thatcher mentions it in her speech to the UN. However, you need to look at the planet as a whole, and we now know that because a warmer world has more clouds in the tropics, the overall global albedo effect is actually a cooling…

This is in response to a “Nature comment” Climate tipping points — too risky to bet against which is scaring people. There are no new research findings in it and nothing to overturn the IPCC's conclusions. Of course it is important to look carefully at tipping points and the IPCC has done so with its high level reviews, and examined many research papers on the topic. The IPCC and climate scientists fully appreciate the importance and significance of tipping points. The reports are saying that factually the science doesn't support them in this case for global warming at the levels of CO2…

We are headed for the next round of climate pledges in 2020. So, what do we need to do to stay within 1.5 C? This is based mainly on the new UN Emissions Gap Report 2019 They talk about the need to "triple or quintuple" our reductions. But that figure is not about the pledges or economic cost, it is just about the CO2 emissions reductions. Now we have the renewables industry which is responsible for much of the reductions so far, and had to be developed pretty much from scratch - and with a big reduction in price of renewables, four fold reduction in solar panels in just 8 years - then it is…

“The history of the bow and arrow is the history of mankind,” said Fred Bear. If you want to get a fresh turkey for Thanksgiving, you don't need to spend $120 for something that calls itself Heritage, you can honor your actual heritage and go get one the way your ancestors did. With a bow and arrow. Since that time, a lot of has improved about archery. Though guns haven't changed much in the last 100 years, archery has gone through a technological renaissance. Entire science conference presentations are devoted to it, and that happened this weekend at the annual meeting of the APS…

Short summary: A Koala population in New South Wales has been severely impacted by fires with loss of perhaps 70%, at least 350 of them killed, and it could be more, leading to headlines of "1000 koalas killed". However there is no way even this population is functionally extinct (i.e. can't produce a new generation). It will recover again, not immediately but in a couple of decades. A koala population can triple in population in 12 years. It depends on eucalyptus leaves and those trees have died, but the eucalyptus grows quickly too. The IUCN red list say there are around 300,000 in the wild…

During mating season in the summer, little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus) females huddle their small, furry bodies together to save thermal energy. These "maternity colonies" are important but with population losses across North America, summer access to an attic or other permanent sheltered structure, as opposed to just trees or rock crevices, could be a huge benefit. In a new Ecosphere paper, researchers investigate and describe the conservation importance of buildings relative to natural, alternative roosts for little brown bats  in Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone'…

Team Trees 20 million trees goal will make no practical difference to climate change. Youtuber Thunderfoot breaks this down very nicely. So long as the ones planting the trees are mindful not to burn fossil fuel in any part of the process, i.e. shipping the sapling trees to where they will be planted it does no harm.  I first became aware of this when one of my favorite YouTube channels Linus Tech Tips made a video about making a tree planting cannon.  Their video also tells a little bit about how this started and became a real movement. I like their attitude towards it. Basically…