Culture & Ethics
Counting the Time (A Whimsical Thought Experiment)
Our economic and political institutions press us to take the short view. So does our culture: our calendars go out only one year. Would our psychology of time change if we adopted another measure? As a thought experiment, imagine changing the basic unit from a year to millenium, which we could abbreviate as an M …
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CONTINUE READINGThe World in 2050: Demographics
I’ve just finished reading Laurence Smith’s The World in 2050. It’s a sober, non-sensationalist look at how current trends are projected to play out over the next four decades. Of course, there’s uncertainty, but the projections do give us some basis for thinking about the world’s future. Here are some important 2050 demographic projections: Two-thirds …
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CONTINUE READINGInterior adopts scientific integrity guidelines
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has formalized the Department’s guidelines on scientific integrity and created the new position of Scientific Integrity Officer, to be filled by Dr. Ralph Morgenweck, Senior Science Advisor at the Fish and Wildlife Service. The guidelines are the first agency effort out of the blocks after the White House Office of Science …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Environmental Blueprint: Environmental monitoring & modeling
This post is the second in our ongoing series on our Environmental Blueprint for California. In our Blueprint, we recommended that Governor Brown establish an independent, statewide agency or council devoted to compilation, modeling, prediction and presentation of environmental quality data. I want to elaborate on what this agency might look like and why we believe …
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CONTINUE READINGA Roadmap for Sustainable Consumption
Individual consumption – including household heating and cooling as well as non-business transportation – creates roughly one-third of U.S. energy use and carbon emissions. It would feasible to reduce these emissions by twenty percent in a decade: there is a lot of low-hanging fruit yet to be picked. A range of individual actions, while seemingly …
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CONTINUE READINGSeeing Nature Through Conservation Eyes
There’s a cool new video on “conservation biology,” which you can find here. It has fabulous photos, as well as interesting commentary on the role of photography in prompting conservation. The photo to the left is an early example: a 19th century shot of Yellowstone that helped prompt the creation of the national …
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CONTINUE READINGDon’t Know Much Biology
Actually, I’m fond of the song, but the headline isn’t really accurate as a description of the public’s views of evolution. The (relatively) good news, according to Gallup, is that “only” 40% of the public think that humans were created in their present form in the last ten thousand years. Obviously, they “don’t know much …
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CONTINUE READINGWhite House scientific integrity guidelines — a long wait for not much
Early on in the Obama administration, promoting scientific integrity in government decisionmaking seemed to be a high priority. Less than 2 months after his inauguration, the President issued a memorandum giving the Office of Science and Technology Policy 4 months to “develop recommendations for Presidential action designed to guarantee scientific integrity throughout the executive branch.” …
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CONTINUE READINGOceans: the biggest loser from our international failure to address greenhouse gas emissions?
In this op-ed from Monday’s Los Angeles Times, UC San Diego scientists Tony Haymet and Andrew Dickson succinctly and directly summarizes the threat that ocean acidification poses to our world, and plead for reductions in carbon emissions. (My colleagues have blogged about ocean acidification before, here and here among other places.) Unfortunately, as my …
CONTINUE READINGGMOs and German Constitutional Law
The German Constitutional Court has issued an opinion upholding severe restrictions on the use of genetically modified plants. Science reports: “With the possibility to deliberately make changes in the genome, genetic engineering influences the elementary structures of life,” the court wrote. “The consequences of such interventions can be, if any, difficult to undo.” The court …
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