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Hunting deer amidst strip malls

To the usual problems of suburban sprawl and strip development -- the traffic, mind-numbing visual blight, and acres of pavement -- add another: It's not easy enough to hunt deer.

That's the situation in Milford, Connecticut, where the owner of the local Honda dealership has asked the town for permission to put in a gravel road so he can hunt, with bow and arrow -- not on a remote tract deep in the woods but on a 100-by-100 plot behind his showroom.

Tilting at Pombo

Alternet has a story about green attempts to unseat Rep. Richard "Dick" Pombo (R-Calif.) that is substantially a retread of Amanda's story from a few weeks ago. There's a lot of hand-waving, but no good, practical answer to the main question, to wit: What chance in hell do these efforts have in succeeding? Perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised come 2006, but from everything I've seen my own answer remains: a snowball's.

(via Sustainablog)

Oh, and I forgot, Carl Pope also blogged about this, quoting a political scientist saying, "Personally, I'd look at anything less than a two-to-one win (by Pombo) as a clear signal." That's one way of defining victory, I guess.

L.A. Times: EPA Follies

On Saturday the L.A. Times ran a series of editorials collectively titled "EPA Follies":

• "A wrong-way agency" -- a general critique.
• "Sticking up for health" -- lauding the EPA for cracking down on teflon.
• "Good, clean information" -- bashing the agency for proposing to weakened the Toxics Release Inventory.

All short, all worth a read.

Will probably soon die out

The smallest vertebrate on record was just discovered in the swamps of Sumatra and Borneo. Squabbling over important details ensued. Is it the smallest fish or just the shortest?

Weight also has to come into this ... If a snake was longer than an elephant, would you say the elephant was smaller than the snake?

Damn good question. I will have to think about that one.

This is all the more serious because the habitat of this fish is disappearing very fast, and the fate of the species is now in doubt.

Huh, sounds familiar. Did you know that more than 360 new species have been discovered on Borneo in just the last ten years? When completed, the world's largest palm oil plantation in this same area (about half the size of the Netherlands) will undoubtedly be responsible for the extinction of untold undiscovered species.

A award-deserving series of stories on the effects of small temperature differences

While I'm noting journalists worth their salt, how about a shout out for the San Francisco Chronicle's Jane Kay? A couple weeks ago she wrote a superb series on global warming, under the rubric "A Warming World: The Difference a Degree Makes." I should have noted it then, but let me remedy that:

• "Polar Warning," about the declining fate of polar bears;
• "Seashore Sea Change," about the web of effects brought about by a three-degree rise in the temperature of California coastal waters;
• "Survival of a Reef," about the slow death of the Cabo Pulmo coral reef in the Gulf of California, and its effect on one Mexican family;
• a fantastic audio slide show in three parts -- one, two, three.

It was all good, but I think my favorite was the second. The next time a friend asks what the big deal is about a few degrees difference in the global temperature, point them here:

A story in increasing fears of climate-change ‘tipping points’

Next up is Juliet Eilperin, documenting the increasing worry among experts about global-warming "tipping point" scenarios.

While scientists remain uncertain when such a point might occur, many say it is urgent that policymakers cut global carbon dioxide emissions in half over the next 50 years or risk the triggering of changes that would be irreversible.

There are three specific events that these scientists describe as especially worrisome and potentially imminent, although the time frames are a matter of dispute: widespread coral bleaching that could damage the world's fisheries within three decades; dramatic sea level rise by the end of the century that would take tens of thousands of years to reverse; and, within 200 years, a shutdown of the ocean current that moderates temperatures in northern Europe.

Irreversible changes, in the next few decades. Whee!

Eilperin also touches on the political pressure being put on Hansen, and digs up this deliciously Orwellian quote:

Mary L. Cleave, deputy associate administrator for NASA's Office of Earth Science, said the agency insists on monitoring interviews with scientists to ensure they are not misquoted.

"People could see it as a constraint," Cleave said. "As a manager, I might see it as protection."

Yes, Dr. Hansen, this is for your own good. Now please relax -- it's easier when you don't struggle ...

A story on the suppression of climate scientist James Hansen

Wow. Here it is only Saturday night and already the weekend's seen two stellar pieces of reporting on global warming, from two of environmental journalism's top stars, on page A1 of their respective newspapers.

First up is Andy Revkin's latest revelation on the Bush administration's ongoing defensive maneuvers against, uh, reality. In this case, reality was being described by the closest thing climate science has to a wise man: James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Administration officials have -- not officially, but clearly, in informal phone calls and memos -- let it be known that he needs to shut up about policy responses to global warming.

The fresh efforts to quiet him, Dr. Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 ... he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the earth "a different planet."

..

In one call, George Deutsch, a recently appointed public affairs officer at NASA headquarters, rejected a request from a producer at National Public Radio to interview Dr. Hansen, said Leslie McCarthy, a public affairs officer responsible for the Goddard Institute.

Citing handwritten notes taken during the conversation, Ms. McCarthy said Mr. Deutsch called N.P.R. "the most liberal" media outlet in the country. She said that in that call and others, Mr. Deutsch said his job was "to make the president look good" and that as a White House appointee that might be Mr. Deutsch's priority.

I have trouble working up umbrage about this stuff any more, it's so routine. What strikes me most is the absurdly counterproductive politics of it is. Hansen's going to have 10 times the soapbox now -- and they can't touch him.

Update [2006-1-29 15:26:20 by David Roberts]: More inside details from RealClimate.

Font size

You may notice that the default font size on Grist (and Gristmill) has increased (starting today and covering the entire site within a week or so). This is being done in response to several complaints from readers and over a year of tireless advocacy (read: obnoxious nagging) by yours truly. The site should be more accessible now, more easily readable by a wider range of people. There will be more scrolling, but this being 2006 and all, I think people have gotten over their aversion to scrolling.

Let us know what you think -- if anything.

(And props to Chris!)

Biodiversity reduces in proximity to humans — so let’s stuff the humans in cities

I mentioned in an earlier post a friend of mine who had caught 14 non-indigenous gray squirrels in her backyard in one week. Well, I have another couple of friends who, upon hearing strange noises on their roof at night, had traps set to catch whatever was up there. The first thing caught was a rat large enough to trip and stay inside of a trap designed for squirrels, followed a few days later by a possum, which looks an awful lot like a giant rat. Neither species are native to the area, of course.

As a kid playing in the woods of Indiana, I would, on occasion, stumble upon dead opossums. One day it occurred to me that they might just be playing dead, like I had always heard they do. I went back once to check and sure enough, he was gone. You would swear they were dead. Stiff as a board, you could prod them with sticks and even pick them up by the tail and toss them. Playing dead is an involuntary reaction similar to a seizure that apparently has enough evolutionary advantages to remain in the gene pool. They don't all play dead, so I suspect that this genetic trait is more common in some areas of the country than others.

And this is why they are going to hell

There are those that take money from others for personal gain. We call them crooks.

And then there are those that take money from oil companies, and in exchange do whatever they can to end the world as we know it. We call them the Bush administration. From today's New York Times:

The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

...

The fresh efforts to quiet him, Dr. Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In the talk, he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the earth "a different planet." The administration's policy is to use voluntary measures to slow, but not reverse, the growth of emissions.

After that speech and the release of data by Dr. Hansen on Dec. 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who relayed the warning to Dr. Hansen that there would be "dire consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Dr. Hansen said in interviews.

...

The fight between Dr. Hansen and administration officials echoes other recent disputes. At climate laboratories of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, many scientists who routinely took calls from reporters five years ago can now do so only if the interview is approved by administration officials in Washington, and then only if a public affairs officer is present or on the phone.

Where scientists' points of view on climate policy align with those of the administration, however, there are few signs of restrictions on extracurricular lectures or writing.

I would love to wait by the pearly gates with a camcorder. Won't they be surprised!