Most science conferences are like little in-group parties, where people who know each other’s work intimately get together to discuss their latest results, and query each other about what to do next. Don’t get me wrong – I love them. You meet interesting people, learn A LOT, and come home with new ideas, and great [...]
Posts Tagged ‘environment’
17 Feb
Science Without Borders: A Whirlwind Weekend at the 2011 AAAS Meeting
Yours truly will be blogging and tweeting from the 2011 AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. Stay tuned for updates from one of the most exciting events in the world of science!
7 Jan
An Ocean of Writing: Brave Blue Words in 2010, 2011 and Beyond
Wanna know what you can expect from Brave Blue Words in 2011? As before, many of my posts will come from the science headlines. I love keeping up on the latest research, and starting this year I’ll even have Science delivered to my door (a special offer for non-members who register for the AAAS annual meeting before January 27, 2011). I’ve also come up with a long list of topics that I am itching to learn and write about. Here’s a partial list of what I have on deck…
29 Dec
Brave Blue Word’s End of the Year Ocean Round-up 2010
2010 was a hard year for the oceans. The biggest disaster was, of course, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which raged on for a mind-boggling, stomach-curdling three months. While BP and the Feds are alternating between pointing fingers, and patting themselves on the back for saving the Gulf, the true impacts of the disaster [...]
21 Dec
Sea-level study of Chesapeake Bay & Evidence of an Impact 35 Million Years Ago
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about sea-level rise. Well, here’s a quick update to start the week (albeit a day or so late) on that same subject, but a little closer to home – for me at least. From ScienceDaily, one of my favorite online new sources, comes good and bad news [...]
17 Dec
Coming soon to a beach near you – the jellyfish blob
The meek shall inherit the Earth – at least the wet parts of it. The lowly jiggly jellyfish, those simple critters that are mostly water and stomach, may be the big winners in the high-stakes gamble we’re playing in the oceans on a global scale. Beautiful and bizarre, jellyfish are on the rise in many [...]
3 Dec
An ocean of ups, downs, and much uncertainty: sea-level rise in the 21st century
One of the oft-cited results of global warming is sea-level rise. But how does it work? Human-induced climate change contributes to sea-level rise in two ways. Almost two-thirds of the predicted rise will be caused by thermal expansion. The ocean is warming, causing the water in it to expand. There’s only one way for this [...]
23 Nov
Riches Beyond Your Wildest Dreams: More on the Census of Marine life
I had planned to write a cool post about tides today, followed by one or more about tide pools, the intertidal zone, and other (possibly) related topics. I’d even thought of a clever title (which I won’t tell you in case you disagree with my wit). But then, as often happens, I was distracted by [...]
8 Nov
When the Mountain of Fire Blew its Top: Why the Mt. Merapi Volcano Erupted
Eruption of Mt. Merapi, and the accompanying earthquakes and tsunami were all caused by the same event: the rubbing together of two of the massive tectonic plates that make up the Earth’s surface. Mt. Merapi is located at a subduction zone, a place where two plates converge, and one is forced beneath the other.
25 Oct
Where the rare is common and extreme is the norm
The U.S. Census was not the only enumeration completed this year. The Census of Marine Life, an unprecedented collaboration of 2,700 scientists from 81 countries culminated in 2010 after ten years, and more than 540 ocean expeditions. And the results are staggering. The Census documented a changing ocean, richer in diversity, more connected through distribution [...]
