22 year old, Systems theory junkie, INTP, Grey-A, Transhumanist, and Feminist.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
New Scientist has a really interesting interactive map showing worldwide temperature change over time. Check it out.
I’m a little surprised to see that temperature changes seem more dramatic the further north one goes. It looks like the Black Sea in particular has a cooling influence on the region surrounding it.
Crash Course Ecology #9 - Nitrogen and Phosphorus Cycles: Always Recycle! Part 2
via thecrashcourse:
Hank describes the desperate need many organisms have for nutrients (specifically nitrogen and phosphorus) and how they go about getting them via the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles.
Table of Contents
Nitrogen Cycle 1:46
Nitrogen Fixing Bacteria 2:32
Nitrifying Bacteria 3:24
Denitrifying Bacteria 4:34
Phosphorous Cycle 5:16
Lithosphere 5:27
Plants 5:56
Animals 5:56
Decomposers 5:56
Aquatic & Marine Ecosystems 6:24
Sedimentation & Weathering 6:55
Synthetic Fertilizers 7:23References and image licenses for this episode can be found in the Google document here: http://dft.ba/-3fDT
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(Source: youtube.com)
Why do polar bears matter? The Pacific Standard Magazine has published one of the most moving pieces I’ve read in a long, long while. It’s long been known that polar bears are endangered, and that the core reason is loss of habitat - sea-ice.
The bears are unique. We revere them not just because they’re cute and cuddly. But because they are masters of the environment, masters of “child care,” and just overall really fucking resilient animals. They depend on sea-ice for hunting food on a seasonal basis, which is a hard concept to wrap our heads around. But the bottom line is that sea-ice is disappearing as the earth warms, and the bears are not adapting their hunting techniques as fast as the ice is melting.
So, again, why do they matter? Author Zach Unger speculates on the answer:
And what we notice when we stare at these bears is that they’re a lot like us. They’re smart and tough and they nurture their young. They’re cute and cuddly and unpredictably ferocious. They’re the top of the food chain, they’re without natural predators.
This isn’t some red-legged frog, warty and swamp-dwelling, that faces annihilation. This is a master predator, a carnivore, with hands and feet and hair. This bear is the boss. So when we think about polar bears going extinct, it’s not their absence that worries us; it’s our own. And because it’s our fault—and because it may be our future—the bears have become the most important animals on earth. After ourselves, of course.
Zach’s piece includes a slideshow, interactive maps and charts, and a video covering the challenges polar bears face. We are witnessing - indeed cataloging every step - of the polar bear’s extinction.
As we end 2012 and reflect on what has been, this article (one of the best I’ve read in a long while) is a sober glimpse into the future of what is to be.
This is an excellent infographic about why consumerist Christmas is terrible. Click the image to be directed to the larger version.
Harvard Scientist Proposes a Way to Refreeze the Arctic to Combat Possible Global Warming Disaster
The amount of ice in the Arctic Ocean shrunk to an all time low in September, with the area covered now only half of what it was in the 1980s. This alarming development along with the global community’s inability to come to a consensus about cutting CO2 emissions has led Harvard professor of applied physics David Keith to look at a technological solution to reversing the warming of the Arctic. In a paper published in Nature Climate Change and an affiliated study in the Environmental Research Letters, Keith proposes a way to refreeze the Arctic through geoengineering.
Injecting reflective particles into the high atmosphere could reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface, counteracting the greenhouse gas effect. High CO2 levels would continue to trap heat in the atmosphere, but with less energy coming in, temperatures on the surface would go down. Keith suggests using the method for a regional correction to restore the ice cover in the Arctic. In his paper, he claims that “with an average solar reduction of only 0.5%, it is possible to recover pre-industrial sea ice extent.” A separate paper shows that this could all be done with a few modified Gulfstream jets and is estimated to cost around $8 billion, which is about the price of a installing a major oil pipeline.
But large-scale geoengineering like what Keith is suggesting is banned by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity because it could result in disastrous unintended consequences. Even Keith acknowledges that manually refreezing the arctic is not the right way to solve the larger problem of global warming. He thinks that this level of geoengineering would only be appropriate to consider in states of emergency such as a sudden collapse of ice sheets or a killing drought. But first, we need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions and he warns that “if we do this and we do not cut emissions, we just walk further and further off the cliff, like Wile E. Coyote.”
credit: Malcolm Wells
Love Nature. Leave It Alone.
The late great Malcolm Wells explains why it makes so much sense to build underground; instead of killing nature, you build under and restore it. Don’t miss our collection of underground, earth sheltered homes.
I really want to live in an underground home one day. That or in a vertical greenhouse in an urban setting. I don’t think I could go very long without seeing lots of plants everyday.
Famous wolf shot and killed
for sportto “protect cows”.Yellowstone National Park’s best-known wolf, beloved by many tourists and valued by scientists who tracked its movements, was shot and killed on Thursday outside the park’s boundaries, Wyoming wildlife officials reported.
The wolf, known as 832F to researchers, was the alpha female of the park’s highly visible Lamar Canyon pack and had become so well known that some wildlife watchers referred to her as a “rock star.” The animal had been a tourist favorite for most of the past six years.
The wolf was fitted with a $4,000 collar with GPS tracking technology, which is being returned, said Daniel Stahler, a project director for Yellowstone’s wolf program. Based on data from the wolf’s collar, researchers knew that her pack rarely ventured outside the park, and then only for brief periods, Dr. Stahler said.
This year’s hunting season in the northern Rockies has been especially controversial because of the high numbers of popular wolves and wolves fitted with research collars that have been killed just outside Yellowstone in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. NYTimes
Why? Thank Obama, for compromising on a bill that delisted wolves from the Endangered Species Act. There are only a handful of wolves alive, almost all are now eligible to be shot.
Laboratory Equipment: World’s Largest Trees Are Dying
The largest living organisms on the planet, the big, old trees that harbor and sustain countless birds and other wildlife, are dying. A report by three of the world’s leading ecologists in today’s issue of the journal Science warns of an alarming increase in death rates among trees 100-300 years…
One Cubic Foot
How humans’ choice to grow just one crop can affect nature’s balance.
A typical terrestrial ecosystem is a living mosaic of hundreds or even thousands of species, balanced on one another’s existence like a biological house of cards. From plants and bugs down to microscopic fungi and bacteria, there’s a world of life in just a cubic meter.
That’s what David Liitschwager’s new book One Cubic Foot set out to capture. Anything that came through a plastic cube one foot on each side was photographed and catalogued. It’s stunning just how much life there is right under our feet, or above our heads, at any moment. Move the cube just a few feet away? You may see a completely different slice of the biodiversity pie.
However, there are tales of caution within those pages. See those two photos at top? The top photo shows the biodiversity present in a typical slice of shrub land. Cooperative populations of over 100 plants and insects. The bottom? It’s from an Iowa cornfield, home to less than an actual handful.
That cornfield is the victim of the modern agricultural practice of monoculture.
Where there were once hundreds of species, living together on the richest soil in the midwest, there remain a sparse few. In manipulating nature to grow only one crop on a piece of land, we have created an almost alien world. It’s beyond a debate between organic vs. conventional (neither of which are perfect). It’s a question of simple biology, and I don’t like the answer.
Be sure to read Robert Krulwich’s review of One Cubic Foot. And then check out Michael Pollan talking about the danger of monocultures to nature and our diets.
Oh, wow. The House Science Committee goes from one human-induced climate change
denier’skeptic’ chairman (Ralph Hall) to another (Lamar Smith), both of Texas. Oh, and Lamar Smith is also the sponsor—the chief advocate—of SOPA no less. Hard to get any more awesome than the US House of Reps right now…
(Source: The Huffington Post)
