Environment

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 generation of scientists, we are seeing an increasing denial of ...
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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 that with global warming the land surface would warm faster than ...
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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 likelihood that many species will become extinct. Many scientists are ...
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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 Arizona State University, a group of us documented the mineral ...
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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 feedback loop—with respect to global warming. A hotter climate will ...
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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, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere began rising rapidly ...
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Translational Ecology <citizenscientist@nicholas.duke.edu>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 Delhi—the urban sky is much cleaner in the United States ...
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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 affirms that spring is really here. Recognizing that it is ...
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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 that have made our air and water much cleaner than ...
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An oft-told story in the world of climate change considers the behavior of frogs in hot water. Put a frog in a pan of hot water and it will jump out. Put a frog in a pan of water and ...
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