Author: Emmett Duffy
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Biodiversity and the battle for Planet Earth: The graphic novel
[Editor’s note: It’s been a big month for the science of biodiversity and an exciting time to be a part of it. Last week, Nature came out with its issue commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Rio meeting that first put biodiversity on the world’s radar screen and spawned the Convention on Biological Diversity. The…
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North Carolina legislature makes history yet again, proposing to outlaw sea level rise
[Editor’s note: OK, I know we live in crazy times, and getting crazier by the day. But this one is so utterly, bat-doo insane, masochistic and over-the-top that I can’t resist and must quote verbatim. By Scott Huler at From Scientific American blogs. John, Craig, Kevin Z, Andrew, et al — what the ___ is…
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Happy International Day for Biological Diversity!
Not only that but Marine Biodiversity (yeah, it caught us by surprise too — I think the Convention on Biological Diversity needs some marketing advice . . .) Anyway, they have a cool logo which is worth a post in its own right. Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, today, 22 May 2012, is the official International…
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Online Encyclopedia of Life hits a million pages
The Encyclopedia of Life has hit a million pages! From ScienceDaily: The Encyclopedia of Life has surged past one million pages of content with the addition of hundreds of thousands of new images and specimen data from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). Launched in 2007 with the support of leading scientific…
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Twilight of the giants in taxonomy
[Adapted in part from my recent review at Faculty of 1000] In an important sense, nothing exists until it’s given a name. And in the living world of organisms, names—official, scientific names—are assigned by unique creatures called taxonomists, experts in the minutiae of structure and biology of particular groups of organisms, working according to a…
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Biodiversity, simply
Have you ever been flummoxed trying to understand — or explain — the concept and importance of biodiversity? Your prayers have been answered. This short video is an absolute gem of intuitive, attractive, concision (en español, with subtitles): [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/33683059[/vimeo] HT to Julia Whitty at Mother Jones.
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Impacts of biodiversity loss rival those of climate change and pollution
Current estimates suggest we are now, or soon will be, in the grip of earth’s sixth mass extinction of species. This is of course a tragedy in many ways—but will it really affect us in any substantial way? With the thundering hooves of all the other apocalyptic horsemen bearing down on us—global warming heating, hypoxic…
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And everyone’s huggin’ each other and swimmin’ through this liquid space atmosphere
That’s what I’m talkin’ about. Verbatim, and there’s more where that came from, some of it surprisingly coherent. From the Ocean Rap Archive: Anthony Kiedis of Red Hot Chili Peppers, lover of the Ocean, circa 1990: ht to Lars Gamfeldt
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Going with the flow – on a planetary scale
We tend to think of ocean currents – when we think of them at all — as stately, slow-moving rivers in the sea, as I believe Ben Franklin himself first referred to the Gulf Stream. But in reality the patterns of water movement across the earth’s surface are extraordinarily complex. Nothing gives you a more…
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Smackdown 2012: Where’s the science?
When was the last time you heard aspirants to the post of leader of the free world holding a reasoned debate about the role of science in American society or the future of the country? Umm, I mean not counting foaming at the mouth about moving to moon colonies after slashing and burning the planet…