September 2009 Archives

The Pacific island nation of  Palau has declared all of its waters a sanctuary for sharks. The archipelago, famed among biologists and divers for its rich marine life, has seen increases in illegal shark fishing, driven by the high prices paid for shark fins in China.

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Given that, for the moment, Palau has only one enforcement vessel to patrol an ocean zone a bit smaller than Texas, the challenge of turning a ban from rhetoric to reality remains. But Palau is getting significant support from private groups, particularly the Pew Charitable Trusts, which worked with groups and government officials in Palau to create the sanctuary plan.

Character is so much more powerful and deep and complex, but it is also very elusive, hard to teach, hard to analyze.

Being able to tell a concise, interesting, and entertaining story that also conveys substance is a trait that everybody likes.

The huge scientific uncertainty about the cost of inaction has obscured a surprisingly strong economic consensus about the economic cost of stabilising global CO2 concentrations at the levels currently being debated by national governments, that is, in the range 450-550 ppm. The typical estimate of costs is 2 per cent of global income, plus or minus 2 per cent. There are no credible estimates above 5 per cent, and I don't think any serious economist believes in a value below zero (that is, a claim that we could eliminate most CO2 emissions using only 'no regrets' policies).

For anyone who, like me, is confident that the expected costs of doing nothing about emissions, relative to stabilisation, are well above 5 per cent of global income that makes the basic choice an easy one. Any agreement that comes out of Copenhagen or its successors will be better than no agreement.

Follow the link to Crooked Timber to read the whole thing.

We don't have a problem of economics, technology, and public problem. We have a problem of perception. James Balog of Extreme Ice Survey

"Green Porno began as an experiment," says Rossellini. Fellow film icon Robert Redford challenged her to create a series of online shorts for the Sundance Channel. The constraints: "It had to work on a small screen, it had to be brief, and it had to be cheap," she says, because she was given a tiny budget. "It also had to be about the natural environment in some way." Her solution: Green Porno, a series of cartoonlike vignettes about the sex life of animals. "I want to give people a sense of wonder about the natural world," she says, "to make them fall in love with it and want to protect it." The first season's episodes were all about backyard invertebrates. For the second season, she teamed up with conservation biologist Claudio Campagna and focused on marine creatures.

When it comes to mass communication, it's as simple as two things: arouse and fulfill. You need first to arouse your audience and get them interested in what you have to say; then you need to fulfill their expectations.

The Age of Stupid is the new four-year epic from McLibel director Franny Armstrong. Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite stars as a man living alone in the devastated world of 2055, looking at old footage from 2008 and asking: why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance? MORE

And what became of the spiders, without whose very personal contributions the textile would not have been possible? While some died in its production, Mr. Godley and Mr. Peers said they set up a system in which the spiders being used were released daily, and detailed spreadsheets were kept to chart the number of spiders used, their yield and the casualty rate.

"We have become sort of the defenders of these spiders, something we never thought we'd be," said Mr. Godley, who calls himself a committed arachnophobe, but added, "They really are very regal-looking creatures." (source)

[T]hat's where this book begins -- with the realization that as an academic I had been trained to think rather than act.²

Facing the combined pressures of habitat loss, hunters and climate change, 600 grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone National Park are going back on the threatened species list under a federal court order issued Monday.

The ruling highlighted climate change's devastation to whitebark pine forests, which produce nuts that some grizzlies rely upon as a mainstay.

With hundreds of thousands of the trees dead or dying over the last two decades, bears striking out in search of new food sources increasingly are being shot in conflicts with humans.

"There is a connection between whitebark pine and grizzly survival," U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy wrote in Monday's ruling. (emphasis added; Associated Press)

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair says he hopes to break the "deadlock" in global climate talks with evidence that 10 million jobs could be created by 2020, if developing nations agree to big cuts in greenhouse gases.

Blair, heading up a climate initiative, released a report that also shows a global climate agreement could increase the world's GDP by 0.8 percent by 2020, as compared with the projected gross domestic product with no climate action. (from the Associated Press)

I haven't been able to find a copy of the report, but I'm sure some economists will note that while creating 10 million jobs is a wonderful thing, it's not clear from the press report whether that's 10 million new jobs after absorbing job losses from carbon-intensive industries. If not, the net benefits could be substantially smaller than promised.

Don't get me wrong. Climate action is clearly worth the cost. I'm just a little skeptical that it's free. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Birds are noteworthy not only for their wit, charm, and sartorial splendor but also for their great dancing. So, for its contribution to this year's Darwin celebrations, London's Rambert Dance Company is putting on a bird-inspired show.(from Origins)

CBO concludes that the cap-and-trade provisions of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, would reduce GDP below what it would otherwise have been--by roughly ¼ to ¾ percent in 2020 and by between 1 and 3½ percent in 2050. By way of comparison, CBO projects that real (that is, inflation-adjusted) GDP will be roughly two and a half times as large in 2050 as it is today, so those changes would be comparatively modest. In the models that CBO reviewed, the long-run cost to households would be smaller than the changes in GDP because consumption falls by less than GDP and because households benefit from more time spent in nonmarket activities. Moreover, these measures of potential costs do not include any benefits of averting climate change.

WASHINGTON -- A report released today by the National Research Council calls on the United States to launch a new multiagency, multiyear, and multidisciplinary initiative to capitalize on the extraordinary advances recently made in biology and to accelerate new breakthroughs that could solve some of society's most pressing problems -- particularly in the areas of food, environment, energy, and health. (press release)

[T]he essence of the New Biology is integration--re-integration of the many subdisciplines of biology, and the integration into biology of physicists, chemists, computer scientists, engineers, and mathematicians to create a research community with the capacity to tackle a broad range of scientific and societal problems. The committee chose biological approaches to solving problems in the areas of food, environment, energy and health as the most inspiring goals to drive the development of the New Biology. But these are not the only problems that we both hope and expect a thriving New Biology to be able to address; fundamental questions in all areas of biology, from understanding the brain to carbon cycling in the ocean, will all be more tractable as the New Biology grows into a flourishing reality. Given the fundamental unity of biology, it is our hope and our expectation that the New Biology will contribute to advances across the life sciences.

Hunting and killing are not the same thing. Even as Idaho has sold more than 14,000 wolf-hunting permits, the first 10 days of the first legal wolf hunt here in decades have yielded only three reported legal kills. (Click here for a video from the Times.)

The gray wolf is a top predator, an essential part of the ecosystem, a symbol of the West. And it's a symbol best displayed, not as pelts on a wall, but by packs in the wild.

Exterminated like vermin, a bounty on their heads, the gray wolf was hunted to extinction in the West. Reintroduced in central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming in 1995, the endangered species staged a remarkable, yet still incomplete, recovery. Now, due to the shortsighted decision by the Bush and Obama administrations to remove the wolf from the endangered species list in Idaho and Montana, that recovery is threatened.

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There's no need for wolf slaughters disguised as "management plans." Wolves will manage quite well if just left alone. Hopefully, the judge will come to that conclusion.

Norman E. Borlaug, the plant scientist who did more than anyone else in the 20th century to teach the world to feed itself and whose work was credited with saving hundreds of millions of lives, died Saturday night. He was 95 and lived in Dallas.

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Dr. Borlaug's advances in plant breeding led to spectacular success in increasing food production in Latin America and Asia and brought him international acclaim. In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Rather than focusing on the social relations around agriculture, Borlaug honed in on one thing: increasing yield. For him, the complexities of poverty and hunger could be reduced to a single problem: not enough food. From there, the answer was simple: grow as much as possible, using whatever technology available.

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But it may be that Borlaug's blindness to politics--his refusal to consider the power relations at work in the countries whose hungry he set out to save--undermined his legacy. His tireless effort to boost grain yields, while no doubt resulting in a flood of cheap grain, created all manner of problems that won't be easily solved.

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The award for buying into the "Green Revolution package" was a bumper crop. The problem was that when everyone did the same thing and yields spiked, the price farmers received for their crops plunged.

The result is a kind of vicious cycle: farmers scramble to produce more to offset losses, leading to yet more downward pressure on prices. Of course, there's the temptation to boost yields with yet more inputs like fertilizer--meaning that farmers' costs could continue creeping up even as the prices they received in the marketplace fell steadily. The result is a kind of structural economic crisis in farming.

The winners in the game are not farmers, but rather the buyers of the cheap commodities (mainly transnational grain processors like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill) as well as input suppliers (like Monsanto, Dupont, and, again, Cargill) that sell the needed seeds and agrichemicals.

Delta's Evolution celebrates the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and his remarkable theory of natural selection. The limited edition pens are hand-turned from solid blocks of marbled blue resin with antiqued, solid sterling silver accents. The central ring depicts the famous sketch "Darwin's Finches" in high relief. The fountain pen has an 18K white gold nib engraved with a snail shell. Each mode is limited to 809 pieces. Cartridge/converter fill.

Giving truly great presentations requires skill, work, and practice. Giving catastrophic presentations is far easier. So if you want to take the easy way out and look like a rank amateur, here are 15 surefire tips to guarantee that you leave a really, really bad impression.

Hook Restaurant is committed to providing an exceptional dining experience, but also to educating the community about our mission. The menu changes daily to reflect whatever sustainable fish are in season and available. We also use locally grown produce, and humane meat and dairy products. The essential characteristic of sustainability is flexibility, so as we learn more we change our behavior. Our eco-friendly practices are merely a reflection of a deeper ideology: the two things than link every human on the planet are food and environment and we cannot live with out either.

Lucky for me, my search for the full picture starts with a plate lined with oysters: a small, crisp California Kumamoto; a soft, briny New York Blue Point; and a sweet, deep-cupped Rappahannock from here in Virginia.

Perhaps more than any other food, oysters reflect their habitats. Each one has a flavor defined by geography, ocean currents and the water's characteristics.

They're all delicious, but the Rappahannock is my favorite -- buttery with a clean finish tasting of the sea. These oysters are grown in one of the region's most pristine tidal freshwater systems, downstream from where [The Nature] Conservancy has worked with local, state and federal partners to protect thousands of acres.

The next dish, Manos de Leon, features unspeakably tender scallops from Baja named "lion's paw" for their size and golden color. Chef serves them with coconut foam, blood oranges and subtle citrus oil that let the sweetness of the tiny pillows shine. They're hand-picked from turquoise lagoons by divers who leave the undersea flora intact, and I imagine them propelling through strands of eelgrass, waving their shells like butterfly wings.

Dear Colleagues,

The multistakeholder on-line consultation on IPBES co-hosted by IUCN, ICSU and DIVERSITAS will close this Sunday 13 September. Many thanks to the 120 individuals who have completed the questionnaire. We hope to receive even more input!
Background information can be found on the official IPBES site now open, and also here.

DIVERSITAS, the international programme of biodiversity science, is working together with its parent organisation, ICSU, the International Council for Science, and IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, to collect the views of the scientific community and other important stakeholders on a proposal for a new Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). IPBES is a mechanism proposed to strengthen the science-policy interface on biodiversity and ecosystem services, with broad similarities to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

IPBES has gathered considerable political support and the current timetable is that a decision on its establishment will take place by late 2010.

You are kindly invited to submit your views on IPBES by completing an online questionnaire, which can be found at IPBES consultation.

In addition, I would ask you to help circulate this link to any potentially interested scientists and institutions that you are aware of. The deadline for submissions is 13 September.

All submissions will be jointly analysed by ICSU, DIVERSITAS and IUCN at a meeting on 22 September, in order to provide input to a key intergovernmental meeting convened by UNEP (5-9 October 2009, Nairobi, Kenya), which will discuss plans for IPBES, and its establishment.

This is an important opportunity for all of us to influence the future mechanisms that will structure the science and policy interface for biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Thanking you in advance for your contribution,

Yours sincerely,

Anne Larigauderie

 

Dr. Anne Larigauderie
Executive Director
DIVERSITAS
Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN)
57, Rue Cuvier- CP 41 75231 Paris Cedex 05
France
Tel: 33 1 40 79 80 41 (direct)
Tel: 33 1 40 79 80 40 (secretariat)
e-mail: anne@diversitas-international.org
www.diversitas-international.org
 

As flawed as it may be, the Waxman-Markey climate bill makes economic sense, offering benefits worth at least twice as much as it costs, if not more.

"From almost any perspective and under almost any assumption, H.R. 2454 is a good investment for the United States to make in our own economic future and in the future of the planet," the paper concludes.