Fracking, flowback, and fish

by Bill Schlesinger Hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking) has become a standard practice for the production of oil and gas, not just from the shale-gas areas, such as the Marcellus shale…

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The Science and The Anti-Science

by Bill Schlesinger Science is facing a deepening crisis in America. Despite our best efforts to increase funding for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education to train a new…

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Drought and Desertification

  by Bill Schlesinger Thirty years ago, a NASA scientist, Dave Rind, published a paper showing the enhanced likelihood of droughts with global warming. His view was prescient. Rind reasoned…

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Biodiversity Bottlenecks

by Chuck Cannon Over the past couple of centuries, we have witnessed a dramatic decline in wildlife populations (1, 2) and the extent of natural areas (3), with an increasing…

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Lizardfall

by Bill Schlesinger Along the mid-coast of California, amidst carefully protected ranches of Silicon Valley executives, one finds rolling hills of oak trees. A few years ago, with colleagues from…

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Air Conditioning

by Bill Schlesinger Hot town, summer in the cityBack of my neck getting dirty and grittyThe Lovin’ Spoonful, 1966 We may be entering a vicious circle—what scientists call a positive…

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The Methane Mystery

Methane is a strong absorbent of infrared (heat) radiation leaving the Earth’s atmosphere, and thus implicated in the ongoing global warming of our planet. After a lull in the 1990s,…

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The Smell of the City

Translational Ecology <[email protected]>10:13 AM (24 minutes ago) The Smell of the City by Bill Schlesinger Even before COVID-19 cleared the air in major world’s cities—New York, Los Angeles, Beijing and…

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Gutting protections for migratory birds

Wood Thrushes have just arrived in our yard in North Carolina, having completed their migration from Central America that began a few weeks ago. Their flutelike singing from the treetops…

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Behind the Smoke Screen

While we have been closely focused on the painful nightly White House briefings on coronavirus, at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Trump’s minions have been busy dismantling decades of regulations…

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