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Tonight's editor: boatsie
In this weekly series we have been discussing the benefits of a vegetarian diet including : better health, animal rights, food safety, global food crisis, frugal living and the immense contribution of meat production to climate change/resource depletion (pdf)
Welcome, welcome. Monday is here once again right on schedule. The time has come to gather around and take a well deserved hiatus from all the politics of the day. Science talk is here. New discoveries, new takes on old knowledge, and other bits of news are all available for the perusing in today's information world. Over the fold are selections from the past week from a few of the many excellent science news sites around the world. Today's tidbits include new analysis explains bulge on farside of the moon, the dynamics of cat lapping, extreme global warming in the ancient past, an invading weed threatens devastation to western range lands, drinking water contamination may be a risk of underground CO2 storage, and toxic algae found in open ocean water for the first time. Pull up that comfy chair and sit by the fire. There is plenty of room for everyone. Get ready for one more session of Dr. Possum's science education and entertainment.
You are in the current Gulf Watchers BP Catastrophe - AUV #426. ROV #425 is here
Bookmark this link to find the latest Gulf Watchers diaries.
Please RECOMMEND THIS DIARY, the motherships have been discontinued.
The digest of diaries is here.
Please be kind to kossacks with bandwidth issues. Please do not post images or videos. Again, many thanks for this.
PLEASE visit Pam LaPier's diary to find out how you can help the Gulf now and in the future. We don't have to be idle! And thanks to Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier for working on this!
Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute's Nourishing the Planet.
Monkey oranges have all the characteristics of a successful crop–high productivity, high prices, extended shelf life, pest resistance, delicious flavor, and high demand. But , the fruit remains undomesticated and has rarely undergone organized cultivation.
What's been going on in the Arctic? First I'll show a picture from Barrow AK's Arctic sea ice webcam as I often do. This one is from 9:18 a.m. Alaska time on 13 November 2010. Snow on the ground of 3", and the near-shore sea ice is affixed to land, while you can see there is open water well-offshore.
More below.
"Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong." Lao Tse
A number of eco-writers - including me - have been called grim, unyielding Malthusians among other things, largely because of our collective emphasis on reporting dire news on climate change, rising populations, depleted soils and water resources. Well, I don't think any of us derive pure joy from writing about it as countries like Taiwan will be one of the first affected by rising sea levels which could leave many parts of the country under water while some low-lying islands in the Pacific are at risk of disappearing altogether.
The impact of water-related climate phenomena (e.g. drought, flooding, sea level rise) is so acute that China's cabinet declared that climate change threatens the country's development with increasing extreme-weather "events" and exacerbating water shortages.
As the promised climate change legislation is dead in the water for the foreseeable future, here is a sample of things to come:
Among the many tortures in store for us over the next years, John Shimkus(R-IL) or Joe Barton (R-TX) will most likely be holding hearings on the "fraud" of human-caused global warming, expressing apologies to God and/or BP for any doubts that have been expressed about their environmental stewardship. Now may be a good time to help spread a little information on what actually became of the recent uproar over "Climategate" and the famous hockey-stick reconstruction of the temperature record over the last millennium.
First, we need to be clear about the role of these millennial reconstructions of climate history. They play no direct role in the modeling of the last century's temperature, for which we have have a combination of good thermometry records and physics-based theory. (see e.g. my little primer) Why then does anybody care enough about the "hockey stick" graph (showing roughly constant temperature, T, until the rise over the last 100 years), to make a fuss about it?
No Dawn Chorus this AM so I am going to fill in with some photos from my trip yesterday to Cumberland Island National Seashore in southeastern Georgia. As this is a last minute diary commentary will be minimal but I will be happy to answer questions.
I overslept this morning and the first thing I thought when I woke up was, "Damn, I've already missed the first hour of Dawn Chorus!" But lo and behold, it appears that our regular host may have overslept herself (or is having technical difficulties) because no Dawn Chorus was awaiting me. So this diary represents a quick stopgap for those of you who like a get a birdie fix and share your own on Sunday morning. Enjoy.