Nick Kristoff departs his usual beat to remind us once again (not yet enough it appears) of the effects of climate change — high mountain glacier melt. [David] Breashears first reached the top of Everest in 1983, and in many subsequent trips to the region he noticed the topography changing, the glaciers shrinking. So he […]
From Climate Progress Last month I warned that Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) was demagoguing a sand barrier ’solution’ that probably won’t help, will take many months, use up valuable resources, vanish in the first storm — and many scientists think will make things worse. As one Coastal geologist explained: “I have yet to speak to […]
For a good middle of summer thriller, lower yourself into a comfortable seat, ignore the inevitable advertisements, turn off your cell phone, flex your fingers for some desperate hand-holding and wait for the lights to go down. The Secret in Their Eyes, the 2010 Academy Award winner for foreign films is a nifty, urban multiple […]
The United States has its oil gusher. China, not to be outdone, counters with a massive spread of green goo, and a flotilla to try to clean it up. Canny readers will notice the reference to unprecedented heat waves …. …a massive tide of algae that is approaching the coast of Qingdao. The outbreak is […]
Morons will always be with us… [but they must not defeat us] “This world is a strange madhouse. Currently, every coachman and every waiter is debating whether relativity theory is correct. Belief in this matter depends on political party affiliation.” So wrote Albert Einstein in a letter to his one time collaborator, the mathematician Marcel […]
“While the BP oil spill has been labeled the worst environmental catastrophe in recent U.S. history, a biofuel is contributing to a Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” the size of New Jersey that scientists say could be every bit as harmful to the gulf. Each year, nitrogen used to fertilize corn, about a third of […]
As you will recall from recent reading, methane (CH4) is an enormously potent greenhouse gas, 21 times, by weight, more powerful than CO2. We hear more about CO2 because it stays in the atmosphere doing it’s reflected-heat blocking for years more than methane does. You will also know, as a matter of 21st century citizenship, […]
While I was hiding out from the news for a week or so, this little myth destroyer appeared. One of the ways some have convinced themselves that war is a human aberration is to point at other mammals and especially our closest hominian cousins: they might fight but they don’t organize themselves for it! Well, […]
Anyone who’s been around me these last weeks will testify to my mini obsession with what Moby Dick has to tell us about the Great Gulf Oil Vomiting of 2010. I’ve been listening daily to an audible telling of the great novel, all 136 chapters, available at Lit2Go from the University of South Florida (via […]