This is the debate on climate change: scientist with the evidence vs. shouting loonie with wild accusations of conspiracy. Listen to the very end when Watson sums up the other guy perfectly.
This is an excellent response to the furious and unfounded assertions of the right-wing denialists that have followed from the release of private email by climate change scientists.
I’m on a couple of private mailing lists where we exchange views on evolution, and <shock horror> we actually argue it times, and sometimes even disagree heatedly with one another. That climate scientists hash out disagreements in vigorous private debate is no surprise, and no sign of either a conspiracy or intent to mislead the public.
Those kooky climate change denialists are at it again — we’ve been beaten to the poll-skewing punch on this one, a site that is collecting votes to use in demanding a strong response by the government to the challenges of global warming. We’re behind by many thousands already, so it may take some work to bring it up — but give it a shot.
5477 agree
8423 disagree
About 2½ years ago, I highlighted the environmental threats to the Australian lungfish, in particular the planned construction of a dam that would destroy their habitat.
To my surprise, Australian environmentalists won this battle!
The proposed $1.8 billion Traveston Dam in Queensland has been quashed to protect endangered species, including Mary River turtle and cod, after a landmark decision by the Environment Minister, Peter Garrett.
In explaining his decision yesterday Mr Garrett said the dam would have ”serious and irreversible effects” on threatened species – which also include the Australian lungfish and the southern barred frog – and he had no option but to reject it.
It’s a little discombobulating—they actually made a good decision to protect some unique biology? The cynic in me says there has to be some other reason, too, but I’ll take it.
There is a gigantic pile of plastic garbage accumulating in the Pacific. It’s concentrate by currents into one floating mass of bottle caps and detergent bottles and nylon debris, all slowly breaking apart into broken bits of polymer bobbing in the waves. It’s not good for marine life.
One of the most vivid demonstrations of the effects is this series of photos of dead sea birds on remote Midway Island — all completely undisturbed and photographed as found. Finding decayed bird corpses reduced to bones and feathers isn’t at all surprising, but some of these remains look more like the remains of some colorful cyborg, half biological and half industrial byproduct.
Recycle, and buy food that doesn’t use plastic packaging. That stuff is a poison pill for the environment.
Hooray for us! We got a nice plug in the Minneapolis Star Tribune for my campus’s conservation efforts, and for the opportunities to major in environmental studies here. Come on, students and parents of students, trust me, this is a good place for the environmentally conscious.
We just have to make the practice of sky burial popular! Maybe this photo set of a Tibetan funeral will help. (WARNING! Those photos show a large flock of vultures stripping a human body of flesh, with the assistance of some helpful Tibetans who break up the larger bones with hatchets. Don’t click on the link if you are at all squeamish.)
Boy, those are some happy vultures. I think I’d like to bring a little joy into the life a few carrion-feeders after I die, too.
Ooops, another warning: I’d looked at it with an adblocker, so I hadn’t noticed the very in-your-face porn ads on the page, so my apologies. I wouldn’t have thought it worth worrying over if it were just pictures of naked people, but ads that treat women like pieces of meat are far more revolting than corpses getting eaten by big birds.
The Pope has become an environmentalist, and he has figured out who is causing all our ecological difficulties: the atheists.
Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where his existence is denied? If the human creature’s relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the ‘final authority,’ and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to possess the most possible.
Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, has a pithy reply.
This is rich coming from the leader of an organisation that has plundered the world to enrich itself. As he sits in his golden palaces, surrounded by unimaginable luxury and material wealth, he lectures the rest of us about restraint and greed. We have nothing to learn about environmentalism from this hypocrite.
I think I’d have a few questions for this pope. Like, “What about over-population, Ratzi dear? What’s the devout Catholic plan for dealing with that rather serious environmental issue?” and “Hey, have you noticed all those hell-holes of destruction in Africa? How does catholicism help people achieve economic and individual autonomy, huh?”
This picture has a little story behind it. Over 250 million years ago, our world experienced the most massive extinction event known, with over 99% of all individuals on the planet dying out abruptly, and diversity was greatly limited for a few million years after that. One possible explanation for the Permian extinction is a correlated series of massive volcanic eruptions that burned through thick coal deposits and drowned the earth in CO2 — global warming on a massive scale. Even cephalopods suffered. The ceratatid ammonoids had been in decline for a long time, but the extinction nearly wiped them out, reducing them to only a few struggling genera.
But then something interesting happened. After the great extinction, the ammonoids exploded in diversity, radiating rapidly. Something about them had made some of them capable of riding out the disaster, and then exploiting the changed world afterwards.
One speculative explanation for the secret of their success is the ability of some members of the cephalopod clade to survive in cold, nearly anoxic conditions, like Vampyroteuthis infernalis. They were able to rebound quickly because of their dismal metabolism and the general fecundity of cephalopods. They restored some ecological webs faster than previously thought and provided an environment for further growth of more severely crippled clades.
It just goes to show you that our current episode of global warming is a relatively minor event. Life will go on. Fast-living organisms with high metabolic demands like, say, humans, might suffer and die from the environmental consequences of a high CO2 atmosphere, but don’t worry — the cephalopods will live on. They might even get a happy surge in numbers from the changes.
Brayard A, Escarguel G, Bucher H, Monnet C, Brühwiler T, Goudemand N, Galfetti T, Guex J (2009) Good Genes and Good Luck: Ammonoid Diversity and the End-Permian Mass Extinction. Science 325(5944):1118-1121.
Marshall CR, Jacobs DK (2009) Flourishing After the End-Permian Mass Extinction. Science 325(5944):1079-1080.
That crank pseudoscience site, Watt’s Up With That, got thoroughly reamed out with the video below (just the fact that the chief crackpot, Anthony Watts, would show up on Glenn Beck’s show is indictment enough, though). Watt was not too happy with his public evisceration, however, and scurried off to get it taken down. Here it is, reposted. Enjoy — it’s a very good takedown of the climate denialist claims.
(via Deltoid)
