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MTV and Campus Climate Challenge team up to get students greening

So I mentioned last week that mtvU and GE are teaming up on an ecomagination Challenge asking college students to come up with ideas for greening their campuses. Today, I found out about another partnership -- this one between MTV proper (or rather, thinkMTV? So many MTVs, so little interest in figuring out which is which) and the Campus Climate Challenge kids.

The Break the Addiction Challenge gives students (both high school and college) three assignments aimed at promoting models of climate responsibility on campus. From the press release:

What’s up with Bush’s nominee for Transportation Secretary?

OK, that headline is horrible. But does anyone have the green goods on Mary Peters, the administration's nominee for Transportation secretary?

Linking up nature areas boosts species

In an effort to test the effectiveness of landscape corridors, scientists down in South Carolina have been surveying forest plots either connected by greenways or not. The result, reported in the current issue of Science as well as in today's Science Times, was a 20% increase in species biodiversity in the connected patches.

Not too astounding, except when you consider that the survey has been going for just six years. Said Dr. Ellen Damschen, lead author of the study:

It is surprising that we would see such a dramatic change over a short time scale ... plants can change relatively quickly through their interactions with the landscape and the animals that interact with them.

Biodiversity, it appears, thrives with connectivity. Just another reason for neighborhoods to have sidewalks. That is, unless your neighbors happen to be the human equivalent of praying mantises -- then you best watch your back, uh, head.

Steve Irwin dies in freak occurrence

Irony, from the Latin ironia: incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result; example: earning fame and fortune wrestling crocodiles and being killed by a basically inoffensive marine creature.

As David pointed out, beloved naturalist Steve Irwin, aka "the crocodile hunter," was killed by a stingray during a diving expedition off the Australian coast on Sunday. The stingray's barb had pierced the TV personality's heart and he died within moments.

Republican War on Science boasts new preface and expanded chapters

Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science has come out in paperback, with a lengthy new preface and lots of updated material. See the book's website for more details.

I interviewed Chris about a year ago, and the story ended up with one of my favorite headlines.

A new urban planning info-sharing service

About a week ago Planetizen, the unfortunately named but otherwise great urban planning, design, and development info-sharing service -- launched Planetizen Radar. It's a bloggy compilation of bits and pieces on those subjects from around the MSM and blogospheric worlds. Handy, if you're into that kind of thing, as I am.

Lots of words, little meaning

The man literally makes no sense:

Did you know …

... that the top source of lead poisoning among endangered California Condors is hunting ammunition? Now you do.

Abandoned mercury meters are contaminating Louisiana

Reader PM writes in to let us know that the media's missing a big story: mercury contamination from mercury meters in oil and gas fields across Louisiana (and probably other states with such fields).

Here's more on mercury meters. Here's a story from last year on the danger.

Anybody out there got any insight on this?

Connect the Plots

Land corridors encourage biodiversity, says research in Science Narrow strips of land that connect isolated natural areas encourage plant biodiversity, according to a new study in Science. The study confirms what ecologists have theorized for decades — that areas connected by land corridors “retain more native species than do isolated patches, that this difference increases […]