Thursday - March 29, 2007Jared Diamond received the Dickson Prize at Carnegie Mellon UniversityJared Diamond, author of
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail
or Succeed and
Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of
Human Societies, received the Dickson Prize in
Science at Carnegie Mellon University last Monday. His talk about why societies
fail or succeed is accessible via a QuickTime stream:
Dickson Prize Award.
Saturday - March 24, 2007Scientific Consensus on Climate ChangeI was discussing global warming with a friend and
he continued to insist that there was no scientific consensus. I went looking
for evidence and found this essay in the December, 2004, issue of
Science:
Naomi Oreskes, "Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on
Climate Change,"
Science
(3 December 2004), Vol. 306, no. 5702, p. 1686.
Sunday - March 18, 2007Warmest winter on recordThe National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) reported that the global average temperature for
December-February was the warmest on record.
Sunday - March 18, 2007David Wasdell talks about the IPCC climate change reportDavid Wasdell talks about the watering down of
the latest IPCC climate change report on this YouTube video: Apollo-Gaia Project.
Sunday - March 18, 2007IPCC report on climate change was watered down by government agentsNew
Scientist reported that the latest report from
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was "watered down when governments
became involved in writing it." Many references in an earlier draft written by
scientists about the potential for faster climate change were reported to have
been omitted from the final version approved by representatives of more than 100
governments.
Saturday - March 17, 2007Put your name on Al Gore's listLet Al Gore send a message to Congress for you
when he testifies about the climate crisis on March 21. Put your name on the
list at http://www.algore.com/cards.html. Over 405,000
have signed up thus far and Al is now hoping for 500,000 signatures by the time
he testifies before Congress.
Thursday - June 22, 2006Dr. Albert Bartlett: Arithmetic, Population and EnergyAn interesting video of a lecture on the
consequences of steady growth by retired Professor of Physics Albert Bartlett is
on the web: Arithmetic, Population and Energy.
Thursday - April 20, 2006Bill Cravis's "Printing to the Sky"For the past couple of days, Carnegie Mellon may
have had the world's tallest stack of boxes, completely encasing the flagpole in
the center of campus.
Tuesday - March 07, 2006California Cars Initiative will demo the conversion of a Toyota Prius to a 100+ mpg plug-in hybridThe California Cars Initiative (CalCars.org) will
publicly convert a Toyota Prius hybrid into a "plug-in" hybrid during the
inaugural
Make
magazine Maker Faire, April 22-23, in San Mateo, CA.
Sunday - June 12, 2005National science academies call for prompt action in response to global warmingEleven national science academies, including the
National Academy of Sciences of the USA, issued a joint statement calling for
"prompt action to reduce the causes of climate change [associated with global
warming], adapt to its impacts and ensure that the issue is included in all
relevant national and international strategies."
Wednesday - June 08, 2005ExxonMobil is effectively directing U.S. climate policy according to newly released documentsThe
Guardian reported that the Bush administration thanked
ExxonMobil executives in "briefing papers given before meetings to the US
undersecretary of state, Paula Dobriansky, between 2001 and 2004 ... for the
company's 'active involvement' in helping to determine climate change policy,
and also seeking its advice on what climate change policies the company might
find acceptable."
Saturday - May 14, 2005Green Roof Project at Carnegie Mellon UniversityThis photo of the Green Roof Project at Carnegie
Mellon University shows the initial planting in progress on the new green roof
on the south wing of Hamerschlag Hall, one of the first green roofs created for
research within Pittsburgh.
Sunday - April 24, 2005Pale Male and Lola do not seem to have any new chicks this yearHawk watchers in Central Park seem to be getting
increasingly skeptical about whether there are any new baby hawks in Pale Male
and Lola's nest. There has been no sighting of chicks and no evidence of
feeding behavior by the adults. It is now long past time for the eggs to have
hatched.
Tuesday - April 19, 2005New Pale Male & Lola offspring suspectedBecause of the way Lola is shading the nest with
her wings, hawk watchers in Central Park believe that Pale Male and Lola have at
least one newly hatched chick in their nest on the 12th floor of the luxury
apartment building at 927 Fifth Avenue in New York City.
Tuesday - April 12, 2005Checking out the eggsJohn Blakeman explains what is happening inside the eggs in Pale Male
and Lola's nest as the hawk watchers in Central Park anxiously await the
hatchings that are due any day now.
Monday - April 11, 2005Pale Male again at risk due to human actionThree rat poison stations found along the fence
of Charles Kennedy's Butterfly Garden are in Pale Male's prime hunting
ground.
Sunday - April 03, 2005Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Systhesis ReportThe
Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis
Report [pdf, 6.6 MB], based on the
effort of 1,300 experts from 95 countries, was released in prepublication draft
form last week. The study says that about 60% of the ecosystem services
supporting life on Earth are being degraded or used
unsustainably.
Tuesday - March 29, 2005New York City is trying to stop an environmental biking group from riding in the cityNew York City continues to prohibit Critical Mass
bike rides in the city and has gone so far as to declare that it is illegal for
anyone to publicize a Critical Mass ride. The City also claims that 20 or more
people who gather together in a city park must have a permit to do
so.
Tuesday - March 22, 2005EPA tried to hide Harvard study saying $5 billion could be saved by mercury regulationsThe
Washington
Post reported that the Environmental Protection
Agency "unveiled a rule last week to limit mercury emissions from U.S. power
plants" and said "the controls could not be more aggressive because the cot to
industry already far exceeded the public health payoff." They
lied.
Sunday - February 06, 20052005 Environmental Sustainability IndexThe Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy
and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network released the
2005 Environment
Sustainability Index which, they say, "benchmarks the ability of
nations to protect the environment over the next several decades." The index
compares countries in "five broad categories: environment systems, reducing
environmental stresses, reducing human vulnerability to environmental stresses,
societal and institutional capacity to respond to environmental challenges, and
global stewardship." The United States ranks 45th among the 146 nations in the
survey.
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