Thursday, April 3rd, 2014
ANN SOLOMAN and CAROL THORBES, - Simon Fraser University (Canada)
Stephan: Here is the latest on the rise of Willful Ignorance, and the decline of knowledge in both the United States and Canada.
Natural history provides essential knowledge for human wellbeing, yet its research, use and instruction in academia, government agencies and non-government organizations is declining drastically.
Simon Fraser University ecologist Anne Salomon is among 17 authors of a new paper that claims this decline in the developed world could seriously undermine the world’s progress in research, conservation and management.
The paper, Natural History’s Place in Science and Society, evaluates the state of natural history research and use today. The journal BioScience has just published the paper online.
Natural history is the study of the fundamental nature of organisms, and how and where they live and interact with their environment.
According to the study, natural history collections have stopped expanding. The number of active collections of preserved plant specimens has dropped since 1990 in Europe and North America.
The authors say 75 per cent of emerging infectious human diseases, including avian influenza, Lyme disease, cholera and rabies, are linked to other animals at some point in their life cycle. Control strategies rely on knowledge of the hosts’ natural history.
The authors note there are all kinds of examples throughout history of how the world could have avoided natural resource-based calamities, had it paid attention to natural history’s […]
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Wednesday, April 2nd, 2014
EMILY ATKIN, - Think Progress
Stephan: Here are some of the responses from the Theocratic Right concerning the IPCC climate report. This is why I do not believe anything of substance will get through the Congress and, why I think individuals are going to have to take responsibility for their situation in the emerging world of sea rise, drought, and increased temperature trends.
When the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases a report, it’s safe to say it’s a pretty big deal. For the one released Monday, more than 1,271 people were nominated to partake in its writing, of which 309 were chosen as lead authors, and 436 as contributing authors. Just to drive the point home a little further: 745 men and women from at least 73 different nationalities took part in writing the latest IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. It was an enormous, momentous effort in scientific consensus.
With that in mind, it is only more mind-boggling when the importance of this gargantuan undertaking is downplayed and misinterpreted, most generally by members of a conservative blogosphere who routinely seek to ignore the realities of climate science, nit-picking at inherently cautious scientific language for any sign that there may be some doubt; that maybe climate change isn’t so bad; that maybe we can keep extracting carbon reserves without atmospheric punishment.
For a look at what the report actually says, click here. Read on for a look at some of the day’s worst offenders.
Breitbart News – The Economy Will Be Fine
Delingpole’s analysis – published before the report was released – hones in on one statistic […]
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Wednesday, April 2nd, 2014
REBEKA SILVA, - Headlines and Global News
Stephan: I have often wondered why zebras have stripes. Here is the answer.
Researchers at the University of California at Davis have finally discovered that zebras have stripes to keep flies away, according to NBC News.
The research team found evidence that zebras and other horse-related species with stripes live in areas that have lots of bloodsucking insects, NBC reported. The team published their findings in the science journal Nature Communications.
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace tried to understand why zebras have stripes 120 years ago, and came up with a number of hypotheses, according to NBC.
They considered that the stripes act as a form of camouflage, or as a pattern to confuse predatory carnivores, NBC reported. They also believed they could be a method of heat management, a social function or a way to avoid flies and other parasites.
“No one knew why zebras have such striking coloration,” lead author Tim Caro, UC Davis professor of wildlife biology, said in a statement, according to NBC. “But solving evolutionary conundrums increases our knowledge of the natural world and may spark greater commitment to conserving it.”
The research team examined regions that have seven species of zebras, horses and donkeys, and also researched the animals’ subspecies and the thickness of their stripes, NBC reported.
They then analyzed a […]
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Wednesday, April 2nd, 2014
ARTURO GARCIA, - The Raw Story
Stephan: This is the level of detail to which the billionaires on the Theocratic Right are turning in their drive to control the policies of the American government. The people of Tennessee have no one to blame but themselves for their falling further and further behind, and for increasing numbers of Tennessee citizens being reduced to peasants. This is what they voted for.
The Tennessee branch of Americans For Prosperity (AFP) – funded by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch – has been working with lawmakers opposed to mass transit projects in the state.
Think Progress reported that AFP has been not only credited with inspiring a bill recently passed in the state senate that undermines such projects through lane restrictions, but was thanked in a statement from a group opposing the Amp, a proposed $174 million rapid bus system in Nashville.
‘It’s pretty tough to fight that kind of money – AFP gets funds from the Koch brothers, and they’re billionaires,” Nashville Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) spokesperson Holly McCall was quoted as saying. ‘We continue to work our local campaign, and we’re probably going to make some tweaks to the design – we’re interested in compromise, because if we don’t, our entire future transit plan is going to be dictated by people who live out of state.”
The MTA said on its website that the Amp would help offset an influx of new residents – nearly 1 million by 2035 – by offering an alternative way for residents to commute, which would in turn cut down on drive times. The agency also argued that implementing […]
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Wednesday, April 2nd, 2014
, - The Wilderness Society
Stephan: Yet another oil spill. This one reveals just how bad the government and corporate oversight concerning these situations has become. This spill was found my hikers after it had been going on for some time.
Oil from an aging Garfield County oil field has contaminated a wash flowing into Utah’s popular Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. Hikers traversing Little Valley Wash discovered the 4-mile wide spill on March 22. The group photographed oil-covered sandstone walls, sandy beds and small waterways, and delivered the images to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) who has sent a team to investigate the spill.
The Wilderness Society’s Assistant Director of Policy and Planning, Phil Hanceford, believes this spill, which went unreported for some time, illustrates both the carelessness of the responsible company, and the need for the BLM to increase its limited monitoring and enforcement capacity.
The oil appears to have been flushed down the wash months ago, but the recent photographs were the first time the BLM was alerted to the problem. This is the second time that officials have looked into oil escaping the Upper Valley oil field, which is operated by Citation Oil and Gas Corp.
‘The news that an unreported oil spill has been contaminating the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is a sure sign that stronger BLM oversight is needed for oil and gas drillers operating on public lands,” Hanceford said.
By law, companies who hold contracts to extract […]
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