Nature & Gardening

Giant Asteroid Caused Dinosaur Extinction

2010-03-05T19:07:29Z

A panel of 41 scientists reviewing 20 years worth of research has concluded that a giant asteroid smacking into Earth is the only plausible explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs around 65 million years ago.

Scientists have concluded that the cause of the so-clled Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) extinction was a 9 mile-wide asteroid slamming into Earth at Chicxulub in what is not Mexico.

“We now have great confidence that an asteroid was the cause of the KT extinction. This triggered large-scale fires, earthquakes measuring more than 10 on the Richter scale, and continental landslides, which created tsunamis,” said Joanna Morgan of Imperial College London, a co-author of the review. via Science Daily

The asteroid is thought to have hit Earth with a force a billion times stronger than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima.

Left & Right | Dogma Dominates Climate Science

2010-03-04T14:59:21Z

Trust me when I say that I am far more a NYTimes readers than a FOX News one. Yet, I try to follow the facts. Searching for new updates on climate change just now, I found Let’s Talk About It: Discussing the Science and Politics of Global Warming, published yesterday.

For one moment, I understand why conservatives hate the NYTimes. This lesson plan on climate change is indoctrination at its worst, and one of the most biased documents I’ve ever seen.

Warm-up | Prior to class, put a strip of masking tape across the floor, and mark one end with the words “strongly agree,” the other “strongly disagree” and the midpoint “neutral or unsure.” At the beginning of class, tell students they will now be asked to literally and figuratively take a stand on climate change.

First, tell students to stand in a line along the masking tape. Explain and show them that the line is an opinion spectrum. Then, tell students that you will read a series of statements out loud. After each statement, students should rearrange themselves on the line depending on how strongly they agree or disagree with each statement. via NYTimes

Dolphin Brains Rival Human's |The Japanese Slaughter Disgrace Continues

2010-02-28T18:56:37Z

‘Riverdo’ by Jean Luc Bozzolihttp://bit.ly/cgBYDD

Emory University neuroscientist Lori Marino, a leading expert in the neuroanatomy of dolphins and whales, begs humans to reconsider making pets and now therapists, of these magnificent creatures.

“Dolphins are sophisticated, self-aware, highly intelligent beings with individual personalities, autonomy and an inner life. They are vulnerable to tremendous suffering and psychological trauma,” Marino says.

Scientists believe that dolphins rival humans in intelligence. One measure known as the encephalization quotient, or EQ, quantifies the size of a species’ brain compared with what would be expected based on body size alone.

Humans have an EQ of about 7 and chimpanzees and other great apes a little more than 2. Dolphins have an EQ of 4-5.

Bloom Energy Reveals Impressive Clients & Existing Functionality

2010-02-25T14:07:56Z

Bloom Energy’s ‘Bloom Box’ flowered yesterday in California. Word is that co-founder KR Sridhar cringes with a smile over ‘Bloom Box’ but I think the term is here to stay. Naysayers remain abundant in the unveiling of Bloom Energy’s new energy technology, but it seems that the unveiling revealed more than a few surprises.

Like the hardy flowering cactus I chose to represent the story, Bloom Box runs on readily-available, plentiful sand for silicon, a key ingredient in the technology. More importantly, the product’s been in operational mode with some of America’s biggest companies who say it works.

Details please.

Flanked by California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former US Secretary of State General Colin Powerll, a member of Bloom’s B of D, Bloom Energy’s CEO Sridhar revealed its current client list: Google, Coca-Cola, eBay, Wal-Mart, Staples, Bank of America, Cox Enterprises, and Fedex Express.

Let's Hope Bloom Energy's 'Bloom Box' Is Bathed In Good Karma & Kilowatts of Clean Energy

2010-02-23T17:54:32Z

FutureTracker| K.R. Sridhar, founder of the Silicon Valley clean tech start-up Bloom Energy, has a global vision, one that’s exciting media and investors both. Sridhar has plenty of skeptical critics, charging that Bloom is certainly not the first fuel cell company to promote clean energy.

As the Next Big Future blog pointed out, the Connecticut company Fuel Cell Energy has been installing fuel cell units since the 1990s, but lost $71 million last year. “People have been trying to develop fuel cell technology for the last 100 years,” says Ron Pernick, cofounder and managing director of Clean Edge, a research firm focused on clean technology. “The biggest obstacle is price, price, and price.” via ABC News

Sridhar says he’d like to see his company’s Bloom Box fuel cell technology lighting up most American households within the next 10 years. Then there’s the fact that 1.5 billion people live without electricity today. Many of these “powerless” live as humans did centuries ago, in darkness and cooking over wood fires that damage their health and the environment.

Bringing the Bloom Box to villagers could be a similar jumpstart to the way that mobile phone technology has bypassed land lines in developing countries.

Liebniz Institute Rejects Geoengineering Oceans Scheme

2010-02-19T14:10:48Z

The results of another study coming out of the Leibniz Insitute of Marine Science in Kiel, Germany, douses the idea that pumping nutrient-rich water up from the deep ocean to boost algai growth in sunlit surface waters is an effective way of ameliorating global warming.

“Computer simulations show that climatic benefits of the proposed geo-engineering scheme would be modest, with the potential to exacerbate global warming should it fail,” said study co-author Dr Andrew Yool of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS).

The plan to ‘draw down’ carbon dioxide from the atmosphere isn’t deemed effective, based on a new interactive model that deals with the straight-line analysis of how much carbon dioxide could in principle be contained with the scientific process.

Climate Scientists Reluctant to Examine Big Research Picture

2010-02-18T19:51:45Z

Nature News online has published an interview with climate researcher Martin Parry at Imperial College London. I left a long comment, which is reprinted here.

Setting the climate record straight Nature News

Climate researcher Martin Parry at Imperial College London co-chaired the second working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the group charged with assessing the effects climate change is likely to have and how these might be mitigated — for the IPCC’s fourth assessment. During the past month, the IPCC has corrected an error about the amount of melting anticipated for the Himalayan glaciers and defended its estimates of the financial costs of damage caused by natural disasters. Nature talks to Parry, who has been busy juggling writing up his own research with investigating queries about the 2007 report.

Do you feel responsible for the Himalayan glacier error?

I have responsibility, with my co-chair, for the whole volume. Likewise, authors have responsibility within the structure of the IPCC for their conclusions. My job is to see that procedures are set up in such a way that we’ve got good quality control. That the procedures apparently weren’t followed in the case of the Himalayan glaciers is a pity. But if you set up procedures and they are not followed, that doesn’t absolve you from responsibility. Ultimately, it comes through to me.

Interview with Martin Perry continues at Nature.com

Schagen World Map SkateboardsAs a thinking person who respects scientific inquiry, I found the interview very unsatisfying, and wrote a response, which is my intellectual property. The first comment, framing resistance to climate change science as coming from Sarah Palin and American Conservatives ticked me off.

I try to post reliable climate research whenever possible. We all know that each week, new discoveries redimensionalize prior ‘facts’ about the environment.

Britain Launches Independent Climate Change Research Inquiry

2010-02-12T00:17:45Z

Following on the heels of controversy surrounding the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UK’s University of East Anglia announced today it will widen its inquity into the so-called ‘climategate’ scandal that preceded Copenhagen talks.

The UEA has invited outside assistance from the Royal Society, Britain’s national academy.

Sir Muir Russell, who recently retired as vice-chancellor of Glasgow University, will head the investigation into the way the unit handled data, including allegations UEA scientists manipulated and suppressed evidence.

The other panel members are: Geoffrey Boulton and Peter Clarke of Edinburgh University; Phil Campbell, editor-in-chief of the journal Nature; David Eyton, head of research and technology at BP; and Jim Norton, an IT expert and external examiner for the Institute of Directors. A report of their findings is due by the end of May 2010.

Julian Morris, executive director of International Policy Network, a think-tank that is sceptical of human-caused climate change, said: “It is not clear to me that you can have an authoritative statement on climate change, as the science has not been settled. I don’t think this can be resolved by having the Royal Society [involved].”

Earth-Orbit Climate Model Results Contradict Current Global WarmingTheory

2010-02-07T23:33:25Z

In yet another example of researchers driving a dagger in current climate research ‘knowledge’, researchers have run new scientific climate models exploring how the Earth’s orbit affects long-term climate trends.

For the second time in a week, we have new research data that explores other possibilities, other models of climate change theory with very different results from the predominant theory.

Post Copenhagen, I watched a PBS-type show of people in Bangladesh arguing that Americans should stop driving cars because we are flooding their countries with our global-warming emissions. Not only are environmentalists proposing that we retool the entire international economy, but people in developing countries are convined that the developed countries are killing them and are now responsible for any and all climate-related problems in their countries.

As Copenhagen fell apart, one woman negotiator from a developing country was threatening to cut her wrists and drew blood as a last-ditch negotiating position, basically saying ‘you are killing my people.’

Today I read that if there was no global warming, sea levels may remain high for another two thousand years, without any greehouse warming. Scientists have embraced one model and ignored the other hypothesis — AGAIN.

DisneyNature 'Oceans' Seduces Marine Lovers

2010-02-06T16:52:50Z

Photo from ‘Oceans’ trailer, movie opening April 22 in UShttp://bit.ly/a6ZQiT

We knew something was going on with ‘oceans’ when a small AC new post moved to the top read for several days this week.

Updating the story was an education in the challenges — not only for coral reefs — but all of biostructures of oceans and the creatures calling them home.

Reading this week’s TIME magazine, we have the answer. Disney’s movie ‘Oceans’ opened in France, drawing twice as many viewers as George Clooney’s ‘Up in the Air’.

‘Oceans’ Trailer

The discussions around ‘Oceans’ highlight a different approach to environmental action, one that resonates with us at Anne of Carversville. Admittedly, we didn’t set out to become dolphin activists who worry about biodiversity in Madagascar.

Besides being my own personal journal, the website originally asked people to just stop and smell the Carversville roses in their own lives.

Doom and gloom environmental lecturing is not our style, especially in a world of intelligent readers with critical-thinking abilities. We have no credentials — but also no agenda — in the environmental action debate on land, sky or sea.

Anne of Carversville does believe that if humans lived in greater harmony with nature, we would exercise better judgment in killing each other and honoring female principles.