Posts

December 10, 2012

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6:54 PM | You’re subsidizing your cable company

Elisabeth Rosenthal: Facing the prospect of regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency, cable TV operators and appliance manufacturers have announced a voluntary program to improve the energy efficiency of the set-top boxes that bring programming into your home. Some environmental advocates say the changes don’t go nearly far enough. I’m skeptical, too, because the market [...]∞

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6:20 PM | Wrestling with privet on Bluebell Island

David George Haskell: Sharp blades and muscles: These are the lab tools used lately by my class. We’ve been mapping and eradicating privet from Bluebell Island, a local hotspot for wildflowers. Privet is a non-native invader and it overshadows and kills native plants. More proof that we’re responsible for the balance of life in the [...]∞

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5:36 PM | Depressing

Jim Robbins, writing for the New York Times: The death rate of many of the biggest and oldest trees around the world is increasing rapidly, scientists report in a new study in Friday’s issue of the journal Science. They warned that research to understand and stem the loss of the trees is urgently needed. ∞∞

December 07, 2012

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6:01 PM | An inverted city

Matt Novak: Jellicoe was talking to the Associated Press in 1960 about his vision for a radically new kind of British town—a town where the bubble-top cars of tomorrow moved freely on elevated streets, and the pedestrian zipped around safely on moving sidewalks. For a town whose main selling point was the freedom to not [...]∞

December 06, 2012

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11:00 AM | Interlude: “To Paradise With Pleasure Haunted With Fear”

A serene terror loomed outside my schoolroom windows. I went to school at the foot of a mountain made of dacite, the same kind of magma that blew Mount St. Helens apart. If I’d known that then, I probably would have had to change schools. I’d seen the eruption on television and read about the [...]

December 05, 2012

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8:17 PM | A microcosm

Mireya Navarro and Rachel Nuwer, reporting for the New York Times: So, six years ago, after the Army Corps of Engineers proposed to erect dunes and elevate beaches along more than six miles of coast to protect this barrier island, the Long Beach City Council voted 5 to 0 against paying its $7 million initial [...]∞

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7:30 PM | A shitty history

Veronique Greenwood reports on pioneering work by Rob D’Anjou, a grad student who discovered that fecal sterols, “the last chemical hurrah of poop”, can record detailed settlement patterns in lake sediment cores. ∞∞

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5:04 PM | Mergui Archipelago

No false color here. This Landsat 5 image shows the southern coast of Myanmar in all its splendor. ∞∞

December 04, 2012

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9:02 PM | Climate change compensation emerges as major issue at Doha talks

Add another to the list. Though it’s not exactly new, the recent spate of severe weather has given the compensation issue new life. ∞∞

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7:27 PM | International symbol for climate change

We need more images like this. And everywhere. ∞∞

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6:25 PM | Dangerous climate change now almost certain

Reuters: The finding will give renewed urgency to the nearly 200 countries attending international climate talks in Doha, Qatar, which run until 7 December and aim to galvanize ambition in fighting climate change by limiting warming to below 2C, a goal nations agreed in 2010. Temperatures have already risen by 0.8C since pre-industrial times. ∞∞

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5:50 PM | Giving slum dwellers an address

Teresa García Alcaraz describes a project in Caracas where a local professor of architecture is helping slum dwellers name their streets and pathways, which had never been done before. Julián Blanco residents would no longer have to say, for example, that they lived in the yellow house next to the stairs just before the place [...]∞

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11:08 AM | Interview Madness I, In Which I Perform Reflection Seismology on Chris Rowan

I adore Chris Rowan of Highly Allochthonous. He and co-blogger Anne Jefferson were my first exposure to the geoblogosphere back when they were on ScienceBlogs. Now they have their own All-geo, which collects some of the best geoblogging on the web. Someday, I will tell you the story of how much I’ve learned from both [...]

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12:00 AM | Shorts: Raising Crane

In this short, costumed scientists create a carefully choreographed childhood for a flock of whooping cranes to save them from extinction. It's the ultimate feel-good story, but it also raises some troubling questions about what it takes to get a species back to being wild.

December 03, 2012

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10:30 PM | Cyberwar comes to town

Because there aren’t any literal foot soldiers in a cyberwar, test cities for war-games don’t have to be full size. ∞∞

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6:22 PM | Hope you like stairs

Lamar Anderson details a Dutch architect’s proposal for a single-family tower, the idea being that building up would allow for higher density detached living. It’s clever, but there probably comes a point when people get sick of climbing stairs. ∞∞

November 29, 2012

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4:51 PM | ■ Town, section, range, and the transportation psychology of a nation

The flight from Boston to Chicago isn’t the most scenic, but if you’re lucky enough to snag a window seat—no mean feat these days—study the patchwork landscape with a discerning eye about 40 minutes into the flight. You’ll notice something a bit peculiar, at least for North America. Instead of the usual tableau of square [...]

November 28, 2012

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6:04 PM | Good for your health, bad for the environment

Jason Motlagh, reporting for the Washington Post: According to a new study, oil palm plantations over the past two decades have cleared about 6,200 square miles of primary and logged forested lands. Palm oil deforestation and hunting have combined to cut Bornean orangutan populations down to 54,000, half the total of the 1980s, according to [...]∞

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4:59 PM | The Wild Life of American Cities

Maggie Koerth-Baker, writing for the New York Times Magazine: In the Twin Cities, scientists have found distinct differences between the plants that grow in urban neighborhoods and those that grow in more rural settings. This doesn’t mean that in one place there are lots of potted geraniums and in another there are native tallgrass prairies. [...]∞

November 27, 2012

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6:52 PM | Chicago hikes (some) transit fares

John Byrne, reporting for the Chicago Tribune: While it’s true the standard payment for a single CTA trip will remain $2.25, the mayor’s transit agency plans a 16 percent increase to the cost of a 30-day pass and higher jumps for one-day, three-day and seven-day passes. About 55 percent of CTA commuters use some kind [...]∞

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5:25 PM | Protecting Cities From the Disasters of the Future

Not sure how I missed this, but Adam Rogers is bang on with this installment of the Observation Deck. The crux of the matter is not in the nitty gritty logistics, but on a larger scale—do we protect cities by starting fresh or by re-engineering the old? ∞∞

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11:55 AM | How Pompeii Perished

I see you jumping up-and-down with your hand in the air, saying “Ooo! I know this one!” I see you, too, over there groaning, “Doesn’t everybody know?” And I see you, glowering, wanting your Mount St. Helens and annoyed I’m spending time on Pompeii instead. Look, I’ve got reasons. And Mount St. Helens has a [...]

November 26, 2012

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8:03 PM | New York Times maps sea level rise

I’ve been seeing maps like these for years, but now that they’ re in the New York Times, I’m guessing (hoping?) more people will take notice. ∞∞

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7:45 PM | Brooklyn says bye-bye to parking spots

Thomas Kaplan, reporting for the New York Times: The city is now seeking to rein in what it sees as a glut of parking. On Monday, a City Council panel is scheduled to consider new zoning regulations that would reduce how many parking spaces must be built with new residential developments in Downtown Brooklyn, and [...]∞

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6:35 PM | Wide racial gap exists on speed of Boston-area commutes

Eric Moskowitz, reporting for the Boston Globe: Among Greater Boston workers, white commuters who drive have the shortest trips to work — averaging less than 27 minutes each way — and black bus riders the longest, exceeding 46 minutes each way. But a gap exists even among those who take the same mode, with shorter [...]∞

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5:21 PM | Urban ecology getting its due

Courtney Humphries, reporting for Nature: In the past, artificial and natural elements have been studied separately, but urban ecologists seek to understand the interplay between them — such as how heat and high carbon dioxide levels boost plant growth, how trees cool cities and how green spaces improve animal habitat. Using ecological methods to tease [...]∞

November 21, 2012

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6:48 PM | Wormholes in old books preserve a history of insects

Ed Yong covers a fascinating new study that uses dots of absent ink in old woodcuts to map the historical biogeography of two wood-boring beetles—the common furniture beetle and the Mediterranean furniture beetle. That alone would make it a neat paper, but wait, there’s more. Because the two beetles were once regionally distinct but have [...]∞

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5:53 PM | Attack of the Mutant Pupfish

Hillary Rosner, writing for Wired: Whether or not you care about pupfish, this plan represents a major philosophical change in how we think about our relationship with nature—because it doesn’t end with the pupfish. It ends with us becoming architects, engineers, and contractors for entire ecosystems. The old approach involved fencing off swaths of wilderness [...]∞

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10:04 AM | Learning the Language of Rivers III: The River Sings

I’ll tell you the moment I realized I’m a raging ignoramus when it comes to rivers, and that I really needed to educate myself. It was when Lockwood and I were mooching about Avery Park. We’d just had a nice dabble down by the Marys River. Other rivers had compelled me with beauty, power, and [...]

November 20, 2012

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4:37 PM | As Coasts Rebuild and U.S. Pays, Repeatedly, the Critics Ask Why

Justin Gillis and Felicity Barringer, reporting for the New York Times: Less widely known about than flood insurance are the subsidies from the Stafford Act, the federal law governing the response to emergencies like hurricanes, wildfires and tornadoes. It kicks in when the president declares a federal disaster that exceeds the response capacity of state [...]∞