Tag-Archive for » water «

May 22nd, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

Mining companies like to claim that they’re bringing economic benefits, but cleanup and health costs far outweigh positive contributions to the economy.

After thousands of years, we’ve finally discovered what the argonaut octopus uses its shell for – it’s essentially a ballast tank.

HUGE step: we’ve synthesized life.

Autism doesn’t have anything to do with vaccines, but children of migrant parents in Europe are at higher risk.

Susan B. Anthony wasn’t anti-choice, no matter what this obnoxious group claims.

The economy is fossil fuels.

Public pressure actually changed the rainforest destroying policies of Nestlé.

Because of decades of unsustainable fishing practices, we are now faced with a very unpleasant choice: the loss of 20 million jobs now or the permanent loss of the fish.

Cypripedium fasciculatum

Cypripedium fasciculatum

The BP oil spill is an American Chernobyl.

Try this fun logic puzzle with the not so fun title non-normalizable probability measures.

Ultrasound could be a good method for male contraception.

We still don’t fully understand why the bees are dying, but at least they aren’t dying everywhere, as was previously believed.

The end of Usenet.

Acupuncture might not be completely useless.

Ugandan women have high rates of maternal mortality that their health minister blames on poor training for health professionals.  Considering how much of that mortality is due to obstetric fistula, focusing on preventing child rape might go further than additional training for nurses.

Oh look, MORE sexism in academia.

The water crisis in Yemen continues to cause conflict and cost lives. We should expect much more of this kind of thing as the climate continues to change.

Many of the people I went to college with probably shouldn’t have gone to college.  And that may have been a better strategy.

Texas is rewriting history for its public schools:

Several changes include sidelining Thomas Jefferson, who favoured separation of church and state, while introducing a new focus on the “significant contributions” of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war.

The new curriculum asserts that “the right to keep and bear arms” is an important element of a democratic society. Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favour of examining scientific advances through military technology.

Sculpture by Mia Liu

Sculpture by Mia Liu

April 01st, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

Drinking bottled water is not a good thing to do.  It’s expensive and bad for the environment and people (especially the poor).  Here’s a list from the NRDC’s Switchboard blogger Michelle Mehta of just a few bottled water statistics to convince you:

  • It takes 3 liters of water to produce 1 liter of bottled water.
  • Producing the 33 billion liters of bottled water that Americans drink each year has an energy footprint equivalent to between 32 and 54 million barrels of oil.
  • The energy footprint of bottled water is as much as 2000 times the energy footprint of producing tap water.
  • Manufacturing the bottles for bottled water alone produces more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.
  • Only about 13 percent of bottles actually get recycled.
  • About 2 million tons of plastic water bottles a year – 66 million bottles every day – end up in landfills instead of being recycled.
  • While nearly all municipal drinking water systems in the U.S. are covered by EPA standards, only an estimated 40% of bottled water products are regulated by the FDA.

If that’s not convincing enough, a certain popular brand of bottled water is so close to the EPA limit on uranium content that one of the labs at my university uses it to test and calibrate their ICP-MS machine.

March 18th, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

The Turks and the Greeks have been fighting over Cyprus for a long time now, but neither side seems to notice that they’re fighting over a dying island.

December 15th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

People don’t want to deal with climate change if it disrupts their lives and the number of people in the US who don’t believe in climate change is increasing (despite the availability of information like this).  This is silly because climate change is going to disrupt their lives a lot more than increasing public transportation or switching over to a green economy ever will.

Scientists studying climate change are frequently described as alarmist or criticized for coming up with wildly unrealistic scenarios.  In reality, we’ve exceeded the IPCC’s worst case scenario for emissions.  If anything, our models are far too conservative.  A recent study suggests that global warming could be 50% higher than current models predict.

Here are just a few things scientists have under-predicted:

Sea level rise is already creating climate refugees and Bolivia is considering moving people because of its climate change induced water issues.  Immigration is a difficult issue in most countries.  Climate change will create refugees directly though things like sea level rise and changes in precipitation that convert livable areas of the world to desert.  It will also create refugees indirectly – climate change will make already scarce resources scarcer, causing violent conflicts.

Science is describing what’s happening to our world and trying to predict what we should prepare for.  But dealing with climate change isn’t a scientific issue – it’s an ethical, economic, and political issue.  The science is being politicized, but science can’t tell us how to prepare for climate change or how to convince people to do something about it.

December 12th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

Testosterone doesn’t actually make people selfish; it promotes fair play.

It’s not that feminists don’t have a sense of humor, you’re just not funny.

China really isn’t getting better about human rights abuses.

Fantastic essay by Asimov on “The Relativity of Wrong.”  I feel like this would be especially good to read in intro science classes.

Having health insurance doesn’t necessarily make healthcare affordable or accessible.

Large animal farms (actually large farms period) do incredible environmental damage with human victims.  Dairies in New Mexico have led to contaminated water in a region where water scarcity is a growing issue.

We thought flowering plants had such an advantage because of their flowers.  Actually, it’s their veins!

Teeny tiny orchid discovered by accident

Teeny tiny orchid discovered by accident

The Discovery Channel clearly doesn’t appreciate the women who watch their shows.  Otherwise why would they put out such offensive ads?

Comic books and vagina dentata.

November 14th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

I had this crazy thought that things would slow down a little after the conference.  I definitely wasn’t considering what missing a week of classes was going to do to my workload.  Oh well.

The conference was a good experience for me.  It was a smaller conference that brought together policy makers, social scientists, and ecologists to talk about water issues.  Based on the arguments conversations we had,  I can see why things take so long to change.  Most of the students, including myself, were very frustrated with the pace of the discussion.  We spent so long very carefully defining the problem (which we all knew and agreed on before we got there) instead of having real conversations about solutions.  For example, we talked a lot about how important it is to engage all stakeholders, or at least as many as you can.  I knew this before I got to the conference and so did everyone else.  I wanted to talk about why we fail at it so often, how to do it, and what to do when you can’t engage them.

October 10th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

Japanese farmers grow the most beautiful apples.  The process is incredibly labor intensive, however, and may die out in the next generation or so.

Anti-Ballistic Missile Complex

Anti-Ballistic Missile Complex

Peg Mullen, the Cindy Sheehan of the Vietnam war, died last week.

Why aren’t more women philosophers?  It’s the same reason most women steer clear of computer science: the large proportion of arrogant, sexist pricks currently in the profession.

Abigail Reynolds - The Music Room

Abigail Reynolds - The Music Room

Hope you like bugs – one of their major predators is on the way out.  And amphibians aren’t the only ones in trouble: 20% of mammals, 12% of birds, 5% of reptiles, and 4% of fish are in danger of extinction.

Just one more woman on a committee or in a group can make an incredible difference.  I’ve been in math classes where I’m the only woman and math classes where I’m one of just a few women.  FSP really captures the difference in the dynamic in her post.

On COROT-7b, it rains rocks into lava lakes.

ExxonMobil is still funding climate change denial PR.  Since we’re  going to hit peak oil in the next 20 years and there’s no way we can change things fast enough to prepare for that, they’ve set themselves up for some incredible profits.  Unfortunately, their profits won’t help us much.

Think ecosystems don’t provide absolutely essential “services” for humanity?  Check out what cutting down part of a forest has done to an entire country.

September 19th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

Sexual assault prevention tips guaranteed to work: men, don’t rape people; women, just stop having a vagina to tempt the rapists.

Postcards from a green future by Liam Young & Darryl Chen

Postcards from a green future by Liam Young & Darryl Chen

For as wealthy as the US is, you’d think we’d have safe drinking water.  But we really don’t.  Pollution is one reason why the popularity of bottled water is such a bad thing – people think that because they’re drinking bottled water they’re safe.  Then they stop worrying about the tap water until it’s too late.

fush suckerbutt by snickcluck on Flicrk

fush suckerbutt by snickcluck on Flickr

Churches and sexual abuse seem to go hand in hand.

Ive always wondered if wed recognize alien intelligence

I've always wondered if we'd recognize alien intelligence

Nation building is for the people who live in that nation.  Also, Afghanistan has a pretty awesome (and rather long) history.

What I think when I see women in games

What I think when I see women in games