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Recent Major Posts
- Pratt Institute holds 124th Commencement, special gallery show
- Rhett Bradbury’s Master’s Thesis explores how gaming can foster political leadership
- Envirolutions asks the Pratt community to identify where there is “room for improvement”
- My review of Railsback and Grimm’s “Agent-based and individual-based modeling” textbook published in Ecology
- Envirolutions club launches its “Room for Improvement” campaign
- Dumb radio ads provide smart insight into the diverse nature of human societies
- Is selective rejection of science really a problem?
- Pratt Envirolutions Students Bring Recycling Bins to Campus
- Concept mapping as a creative tool
- Governor Cuomo makes the connection between natural disasters and climate change, calls for building in resilience
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Recent Minor Posts
- Useful guides for writing good pseudocode
- The benefits of a maintaining a relatively small in-group
- Pratt Professor Ágnes Mócsy releases “Smashing Matters” short film
- NPR piece suggests that economics are pushing us towards nutrient recycling
- Just in case you missed it the first ten times: E.O. Wilson likes group selection, Jerry Coyne does not
- Allen MacNeill predicts resolution of Ev-Coop debates
- Martin Nowak to lecture on the compatibility of god and the evolutionary process
- Understanding kin selection and reciprocity when strategies are culturally propagated
- “Earth Hour” seeks to re-focus our attention on all the earth provides
- Seth Horowitz on our perception of sound
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What I am reading now
Category Archives: Pollution
NPR piece suggests that economics are pushing us towards nutrient recycling
NPR All Things Considered “Cities Turn Sewage Into ‘Black Gold’ For Local Farms” This is a really interesting piece because it suggests that the costs associated with properly disposing of human waste are beginning to incentivize municipalities to repurpose this … Continue reading
Fracking study retracted after the discovery of a massive conflict of interest
All Things Considered “Positive Fracking Study Was Funded By Gas Company” 1.5 million dollars is a lot to receive from a corporation with interest in your research! Scientists can be bought, and transparency is the only thing that prevents profit-driven … Continue reading
Rob Nixon on Rachel Carson’s prescience
The Chronicle of Higher Education “Rachel Carson’s Prescience“
Posted in A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Biography, Climate Change, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Economics, Environmental Justice, Habitat Destruction, Marine Ecosystems, Political Science, Pollution, Public Policy
Tagged Rachel Carson, Rob Nixon, Silent Spring, The Chronicle of Higher Education
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Barry Commoner, pioneering scientist and environmentalist, is dead at 95
Barry Commoner was an exceptional scientist and human being. Below are some nice tributes to him: The New York Times “Scientist, Candidate and Planet Earth’s Lifeguard” The New York Times “Barry Commoner’s Uncommon Life” The Los Angeles Times “Barry Commoner … Continue reading
Want a good gauge of how much humans pollute waterways? Just measure for caffeine!
Marine Pollution Bulletin “Occurrence and concentration of caffeine in Oregon coastal waters” Coffee addicts worldwide can be proud of this result: you are leaving a “pissprint” on local waters.
Climate and Clean Air Coalition unites air pollution concerns
Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollutants This is another example of how considering air pollution from the perspective of both climate change and human health might begin to inspire global action.
Reductions in fertilizer use are now worth carbon credits
American Carbon Registry “ACR Approves MSU-EPRI Carbon Offset Methodology for Emission Reductions from Agricultural Nitrous Oxide“
Posted in A Minor Post, Pollution, Sustainable Agriculture, Web
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Does anthropogenic change make natives into invaders?
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment “Native invaders – challenges for science, management, policy, and society” This article makes an important point: the “alien” criteria for invasives is a bit arbitrary when the problem with invasives is their ability to … Continue reading
Rachel Carson still under attack for bringing her values to bear on her science
Slate “Rachel Carson Didn’t Kill Millions of Africans: How the 50-year-old campaign against Silent Spring still distorts environmental debates” There is a lot of interesting stuff here, including a fascinating view into how scientific findings get processed by the public (both … Continue reading
ESA 2012 Symposium #23, Commodifying Nature: The Scientific Basis for Ecosystem Service Valuation in Environmental Decision Making
Friday morning is a tough spot at an ESA meeting. It is the last day of a six-day conference, and there are only morning events, so many people evacuate before this final session. And for those who do drag themselves … Continue reading
Posted in A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Biodiversity Loss, Biomes, Climate Change, Conferences, Conservation Biology, Ecological Society of America, Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Freshwater Ecosystems, Habitat Destruction, Interdisciplinarity, Invasive Species, Pollution, Talks & Seminars, Temperate Rainforest, Traditional Ecological Knowledge
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Is the European Union going rogue or playing altruist on airline emissions?
Contrails captured by NASA scientist Louis Ngyyen Global carbon emissions continue to increase, threatening future generations with catastrophic climate change. And while most of the world agrees that something needs to be done to curb our carbon emissions, several decades … Continue reading
Using Ecological Footprints to Teach Sustainability
Technically- and traditionally-speaking, an ecology course should not really deal too much with policy. A strict definition of ecology should limit the topic to the study of the interaction between organisms and their environment, and for decades now that has … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropogenic Change, Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Ecological Footprinting, Ecology Education, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Ethics, MSCI-270, Ecology, Pollution, Public Policy, Quantitative Analysis, Sustainability, Teaching Tools, Web
Tagged American Public Media, Consumer Consequences, Redefining Progress
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Official video of the International Year of Biodiversity 2010
One of my current Ecology students brought this video, produced by the United Nations, to my attention today: I think what is most fascinating about this video is the premise upon which it is built. Using the video screen to … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropogenic Change, Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Ecology Education, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Extinction, Film & Television, Invasive Species, Pollution, Public Policy, Sustainability, Urban Ecology
Tagged Convention on Biodiversity, United Nations, YouTube
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Steven Chillrud Visit to Pratt Institute
Every year, Pratt Institute’s School of Liberal Arts and Sciences hosts a “scholar-in-residence” who spends a few days on campus giving talks and workshops to faculty and students. The honor of selecting a scholar-in-residence rotates between the three major departments … Continue reading
