Latest Articles
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We Hear Mars Is Nice This Time of Year
Top scientists say global warming is triggering ecosystem changes around the globe The natural world is already getting knocked around by climate change, the world’s top climate experts said today. In the second of four reports being released this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group looked at the impacts of global […]
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As expected, the news is mostly bad, and then worse, and then worse still
Climate change is already having big impacts on the natural world and notable effects on human societies, according to the latest climate report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, being released on Friday. In short, climate change isn’t in the future; it’s in the right now. The previous installment from the IPCC, released in […]
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Sometimes you have to take risks to save endangered species
I received an irate email the other day from Luke Hunter, who is the (taking a deep breath) Global Carnivore Program Coordinator for the Wildlife Conservation Society and an Associate Conservation Scientist in the Science and Exploration Program.
Apparently, somebody ratted me out and sent him a copy of one of my posts where I made a passing comment about the absurd amount of darting and radio collaring that is now going on in this human-dominated world:
Here is another article where two proud researchers first trapped, then darted, then radio collared cheetahs in Iran. The process will of course be repeated over and over again until their grant money runs out.
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When people ask silly questions
"If fossil fuels are the problem, wouldn't running out of them be good?"
There's an old joke about economists and other Panglossians that bears on this question:
A man leaps off the top of a skyscraper and, as he passes by each floor, true to his optimistic tendencies, he says, "Well, so far, so good."
Running out of fossil fuels is like this man running out of floors. The critical thing is not to jump ... i.e., not to commit all that carbon to the atmosphere in the first place.
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Canucks 1, US 0
Turns out that springing forward a month early didn’t save any electricity at all in the U.S. From Reuters: But other than forcing millions of drowsy American workers and school children into the dark, wintry weather three weeks early, the move appears to have had little impact on power usage. “We haven’t seen any measurable […]
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A review of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Sixty Days and Counting
Sixty Days and Counting, by Kim Stanley Robinson. I waited for the release of Kim Stanley Robinson’s new book, Sixty Days and Counting, like a computer geek awaiting the release of the PS3: standing outside the door of the store, in the snow, having cleared my calendar for a few days so I could dive […]
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Organic coffee deep-sixed
Due a recent decision over at the USDA's National Organic Program, organic coffee, in the U.S. at least, may be a thing of the past. I wrote about this decision on Salon and did not shout it out to Gristies right away (mea culpa), but I am now.
The USDA decision, which affects the way small farmer cooperatives in the Third World are certified, will also dry up supplies of organic cocoa and curtail bananas. So eat your organic Dagoba bars now while they're still available.
It doesn't look like there's a solution right away, though a friend over at PCC -- in Grist's backyard of Seattle -- tells me the solution might be to build certification organizations in local markets. In the meantime, however, certifiers, coffee farmers and NGOs that work in the Third World are perplexed and upset.
I'll be updating over at Chews Wise blog and post any big moves here.
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Good new blog on climate science and communication
Climate scientist Michael Tobis has started a blog, not so much about climate science itself as about the challenges of communicating about it and the bizarre notions about it that remain puzzlingly persistent. Off to a good start.
