Environment

Bags of Rubbish Bad science is problem enough, but when the media gets hold of it, it can become worse science. It can become a part of an 'everybody knows that' truth which is, in reality, global myth. When that 'truth' circles back to the politicians, they may enact knee-jerk laws which cause more problems than they solve. Such is the case with the British Government's attitude to environmental issues. How to WRAP up the pollution problem, British Government style.Stage 1: you realise that sulphuric acid and lead are bad for the environment, so you require all scrapyards to conform to some…

With climate change looming, the hunt for places that can soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is on. Obvious "sinks" for the greenhouse gas include the oceans and the enormous trees of tropical rainforests. But temperate forests also play a role, and new research now suggests they can store more carbon than previously thought. In a study that drew on both historical and present-day datasets, Jeanine Rhemtulla of McGill University and David Mladenoff and Murray Clayton of University of Wisconsin-Madison quantified and compared the above-ground carbon held in the forest trees of…

Dr. James E. Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and an adviser to Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” is quoted and referred to in the New York Times article "The Civil Heretic - Freeman Dyson - Profile"  - by Nicholas Dawidoff, March 29, 2009, New York Times, page MM32 and in the New York Times Magazine, March 25, 2009. Dr. Hansen sent his response to the article to those who have subscribed to his e-mail commentaries the day before its publication in the Sunday New York Times. He has given me permission to convey his clarification in its…

A few photos from around the world of cities that participated in Earth Hour 2009.Nearly 4,000 cities and towns in 88 countries took part in an effort to call attention to climate change. The event, sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund, called on cities to dim nonessential lights from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. Earth Hour SydneyThis combination photograph shows the Sydney Harbor Bridge and Sydney Opera House illuminated prior to Earth Hour (top) and turned off during Earth Hour (bottom) on March 29, 2008. (Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images) Earth Hour LondonThe Houses of Parliament in central London,…

An open Letter to the World's Leaders Honorable Leaders, As our climate continues to change due to our extravagant use of fossil fuels, new sources of those fuels are being discovered in the Arctic regions. Given that it is our own profligate use of fuels that has caused these new sources to be revealed, does it not make sense to conserve them?  Is it not blindingly obvious that burning these fuels will make climate change  worse? And yet there is a race to be first to reach, extract, and profit by this new 'wealth'. Some of the Arctic oil and gas is already in the pipelines. Much…

Saturday, March 28, 8:30-9:30 PM in each time zone around the world, lights will be dimmed for Earth Hour 2009. San Francisco joins World Wildlife Fund and 2,848 cities, seven times more than last year, in 84 countries to take action on global climate change. World Wildlife Fund, the world’s leading conservation organization for nearly half a century, works in 100 countries with 5 million members. "WWF’s mission is to stop the degradation of the earth’s natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature, by conserving the world’s biological diversity,…

This Saturday night, a global effort is set to take place to promote energy conservation – the 3rd annual Earth Hour. To join in on the effort, simply turn off your lights from 8:30 – 9:30pm in your local time zone. This worldwide effort is designed to demonstrate that each person has a choice in their energy consumption - and at any time can simply choose to use less. Turning off your lights is an easy way to reduce your energy usage, as well as reduce your energy bill. But as with many things, it’s always more fun to do it with friends. So 8:30-9:30pm on March 28th 2009 has been designated…

It is commonly held that if floating ice melts, then it makes no difference to sea levels. This is true only of free-floating ice. When a sheet of ice is attached to  land, basic principles of mechanics show that the weight is partially supported by that land.  A sheet of ice attached to land is a semi-cantilever.  A cantilever is a beam supported at one end only.  A semi-cantilever is a lever supported at one end, but with additional support at one or more places.  This support prevents the beam from sagging.  A striking example is in the struts placed over or…

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent." Thus spoke Sir Winston Churchill, in the company of President Harry S. Truman, on March 5, 1946, at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri. But this Iron Curtain was not a single boundary, but two fences (mostly) separated by a furlong or so (5 furlongs = 1 kilometre) with a no-man’s-land in between. As the map (based on one from http://europeangreenbelt.org/) shows, the Iron Curtain, which actually stretched from the Artic Ocean to the Mediterranean and Black Seas, did not stop at the…

We have developed a site specific restoration plan for the Tillamook River Watershed based on project specific field surveys, available data on aquatic habitat, salmonid abundance, water quality, fish passage, and land management practices. This project was conducted under contract to the Tillamook Bay Watershed Council.  Check out the report (BIG FILE). We have developed a site specific restoration plan for the Netarts Bay Watershed based on project specific field surveys, available data on aquatic habitat,salmonid abundance, water quality, fish passage, and land management practices.…