Scientific method: Statistical errors→

Regina Nuzzo, reporting for Nature:

“Many statisticians also advocate replacing the P value with methods that take advantage of Bayes’ rule: an eighteenth-century theorem that describes how to think about probability as the plausibility of an outcome, rather than as the potential frequency of that outcome. This entails a certain subjectivity — something that the statistical pioneers were trying to avoid. But the Bayesian framework makes it comparatively easy for observers to incorporate what they know about the world into their conclusions, and to calculate how probabilities change as new evidence arises.

Others argue for a more ecumenical approach, encouraging researchers to try multiple methods on the same data set. Stephen Senn, a statistician at the Centre for Public Health Research in Luxembourg City, likens this to using a floor-cleaning robot that cannot find its own way out of a corner: any data-analysis method will eventually hit a wall, and some common sense will be needed to get the process moving again. If the various methods come up with different answers, he says, “that’s a suggestion to be more creative and try to find out why”, which should lead to a better understanding of the underlying reality.”

Good points in this article on statistics -- how large of was the effect, if you use different statistical methods or approaches do you get the same result?

If Biodiversity Rose, Would Anybody Notice?→

Conservation Magazine:

“Many people say they’d like to see more biodiversity in their city parks and gardens. But a study suggests that when new species do appear, urbanites remain oblivious to the improvements.

The researchers conducted their experiments at 14 public gardens in Paris, each roughly 1 hectare. In some of the gardens, the team took steps to increase biodiversity such as turning lawns into flowerbeds, sowing seeds, planting starflower to draw pollinators, encouraging the growth of plants that support butterflies, and adding nest boxes for birds.

The researchers then surveyed the gardens to see if biodiversity had actually improved. They recorded bird sightings and sounds, captured butterflies, and took pictures of flowers. The team also interviewed 1,116 people who regularly visited the gardens to find out whether they valued biodiversity and had noticed the changes.”

If one person benefits, then the cost-benefit is worth it.

9 Reasons the U.S. Ended Up So Much More Car-Dependent Than Europe→

Ralph Buehler, reporting for The Atlantic Cities:

“Between the 1920s and 1960s, policies adapting cities to car travel in the United States served as a role model for much of Western Europe. But by the late 1960s, many European cities started refocusing their policies to curb car use by promoting walking, cycling, and public transportation. For the last two decades, in the face of car-dependence, suburban sprawl, and an increasingly unsustainable transportation system, U.S. planners have been looking to Western Europe.

The numbers show the need for change. In 2010, Americans drove for 85 percent of their daily trips, compared to car trip shares of 50 to 65 percent in Europe. Longer trip distances only partially explain the difference. Roughly 30 percent of daily trips are shorter than a mile on either side of the Atlantic. But of those under one-mile trips, Americans drove almost 70 percent of the time, while Europeans made 70 percent of their short trips by bicycle, foot, or public transportation.”

Nice summary of the likely causes of our auto dependence here in North America.

A Valuable Reputation→

Rachel Aviv, writing for the New Yorker:

“[Dr.] Hayes has devoted the past fifteen years to studying atrazine, a widely used herbicide made by Syngenta. The company’s notes reveal that it struggled to make sense of him, and plotted ways to discredit him.”

The burden of proof should be on Syngenta. Shouldn’t a company manufacturing and selling a pesticide be civically responsible and prove that their product can be used safely and without substantial environmental effect or find an alternative? If your company is not innovative or competitive, then challenge the science with bogus issues, distract or misinform the public, attack scientists, and use your government connections to allow your company to continue to profit on a poisonous product. Today it is publicly accepted that large corporations should only care about profit, but why is it that we accept their unethical and criminal activities?

Human waste can be converted into valuable fertilizer→

Samantha Larson, reporting for National Geographic:

“Most conventional farms invest in synthetic fertilizer, which requires energy to produce and is associated with many environmental problems of its own. But by separating out human urine before it gets to the wastewater plant, Rich Earth cofounder Kim Nace says they can turn it into a robust fertilizer alternative: a “local, accessible, free, sanitary source of nitrogen and phosphorous.””

Closing the waste loop is good natural resource management.

When Pedestrians Get Mixed Signals→

Tom Vanderbiltfeb, writing in the New York Times:

“If tough love will not make pedestrians safer, what will? The answer is: better walking infrastructure, slower car speeds and more pedestrians. But it’s easier to write off the problem as one of jaywalkers.

Nowadays, the word connotes an amorphous urban nuisance. In fact, the term once referred to country bumpkins (“jays”), who came to the city and perambulated in a way that amused and exasperated savvy urban bipeds. As the historian Peter Norton has documented, the word was then overhauled in the early part of the 20th century. A coalition of pro-automobile interests Mr. Norton calls “motordom” succeeded in shifting the focus of street safety from curbing the actions of rogue drivers to curbing rogue walkers. The pedestrian pushback was shortlived: An attempt to popularize the term “jay driver” was left behind in a cloud of exhaust.

Sure, we may call an errant driver, per the comedian George Carlin, an “idiot” or a “maniac,” but there is no word to tar an entire class of negligent motorists. This is because of the extent to which driving has been normalized for most Americans: We constantly see the world through what has been called the “windshield view.”

Those humans in Los Angeles who began walking a second or two after the light was blinking were, after all, violating the “Vehicle Code.” Note that cars, apparently, do not violate a “Human Code.””

A safe pedestrian tipping point is based on the number of pedestrians -- a feedback loop.

An integrated computer modeling system for water resource management→

Marlene Cimons, reporting for the National Science Foundation:

“Jonathan Goodall’s mission is “to take all these models from different groups and somehow glue them together,” he says.

The National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded scientist and associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Virginia, is working to design an integrated computer modeling system that will seamlessly connect all the different models, enabling everyone involved in the water resources field to see the big picture...

”Models are used by water resource engineers every day to make predictions, such as when will a river crest following a heavy rain storm, or how long until a city’s water supply runs dry during a period of drought,” he adds. “One of the problems with our current models is that they often consider only isolated parts of the water cycle. Our work argues that when you look at all the pieces together, you will come up with a more comprehensive picture that will result in more accurate predictions.””

Device Mines Precious Phosphorus From Sewage→

Deirdre Lockwood, writing for Chemical and Engineering News:

“Scientists predict that the scarcity of phosphorus will increase over the next few decades as the growing demand for agricultural fertilizer depletes geologic reserves of the element. Meanwhile, phosphates released from wastewater into natural waterways can cause harmful algal blooms and low-oxygen conditions that can threaten to kill fish. Now a team of researchers has designed a system that could help solve both of these problems. It captures phosphorus from sewage waste and delivers clean water using a combined osmosis-distillation process.”

A step closer to capturing a necessary nutrient.

24 Reasons to Ignore Best Places Lists→

Christie Aschwanden, reporting for The Last Word on Nothing:

“What I’ve learned from living in three countries and more than 20 locations is that there is no perfect place. Believing otherwise prevents the letting go of elsewhere necessary to create a home place where you are— a journey that takes effort and devotion.

Turning place into a consumer item diminishes its essential dimensions...

The thing about those lists is that they attract the kind of people who expect a place to serve them, but this is backwards thinking. The best places are those with a devoted population.”

The best place to live is where you are.

Biodiversity can flourish on an urban planet→

Madhusudan Katti, writing for the Conversation:

“Mention the word biodiversity to a city dweller and images of remote natural beauty will probably come to mind – not an empty car park around the corner. Wildlife, we think, should be found in wild places, or confined to sanctuaries and national parks. But research shows that cities can in fact support biodiversity and this can have major implications for conservation efforts.”

City dwellers can also help by restoring shards of habitat near their homes.

Dancing by the Marsh→

Christopher Reiger, writing for Center for Humans & Nature:

“In order for me to locate myself in a new place, I need to wrap my head around its natural history. That’s my principle “way in.” Unfortunately, after three-and-a-half years living in San Francisco, I still have only a superficial understanding of the ecology, history, and culture of the Bay Area. When I first moved here, I felt unmoored from the mid-Atlantic natural history that I know best. No longer could I casually recognize a species of bird by the way it winged past, and I was flummoxed by the fact that even species familiar to me—like dark-eyed juncos—wear different plumages here. ”

An interesting account of a person's attempt to find a sense of place.

Suburban Sprawl Cancels Carbon-Footprint Savings of Dense Urban Cores→

Robert Sanders, reporting for UC Berkeley:

“According to a new study by UC Berkeley researchers, population-dense cities contribute less greenhouse-gas emissions per person than other areas of the country, but these cities’ extensive suburbs essentially wipe out the climate benefits.

A key finding of the UC Berkeley study is that suburbs account for half of all household greenhouse gas emissions, even though they account for less than half the U.S. population. The average carbon footprint of households living in the center of large, population-dense urban cities is about 50 percent below average, while households in distant suburbs are up to twice the average.”

Can you have a dense urban core without the suburban sprawl? It hasn't been possible recently.

For Great Lakes' Sake→

Greg Breining, reporting for ENSIA:

“Big as they are, these lakes are not immune to harm. Many have already suffered overfishing, the introduction of exotic species, industrial pollution, and algae blooms and other signs of nutrient inflow from deforestation, agriculture and sewage disposal. And, of course, climate change. All these influences stand to impair the gifts these large lakes provide.

Fortunately, as human pressures increase, our understanding of large lakes is increasing as well. And lessons learned on one continent can help solve problems on another. Researchers studying large lakes around the world share insights pertinent to management, whether it is mitigating the damage of invasive species in U.S. Great Lakes, protecting a rare freshwater seal from industrial contamination of Lake Baikal, or balancing concerns of biodiversity with the needs of African fishermen.”

A great story on the world's big lakes.

Maintaining the Long View→

Amelia Apfel, reporting for ENSIA:

“The Experimental Lakes Area, a network of 58 lakes in northwestern Ontario that has provided a unique outdoor laboratory for long-term ecological research and monitoring since 1968, recently came dangerously close to shutting down.

The ELA has one of the most complete sets of water quality information in the world and a long history of research on topics that are important to the public and policy-makers, including mercury pollution, harmful algal blooms and the impact of aquaculture on native fish populations. The studies are applicable to lakes on every continent.

Even so, the Canadian government announced in 2012 that it would pull the funding that keeps the field station running to save at least $1.5 million a year, part of a massive austerity plan. The ELA shut down briefly in April 2013 and has been open only on a limited basis since May.”

One hopes that the lake research community finds a way to make this work.

Urban Nature: How to Foster Biodiversity in World’s Cities→

Richard Conniff, writing for Yale environment 360:

“As the world becomes more urbanized, researchers and city managers from Baltimore to Britain are recognizing the importance of providing urban habitat that can support biodiversity. It just may be the start of an urban wildlife movement.”

Great use of oaks is advocated, as this taxa is important for many insects and birds.

The United (Watershed) States of America→

John Lavey, writing in Community Builders:

“What if the Western states were formed around watershed as [John Wesley] Powell envisioned? What would that look like and could we speculate on what that might mean for the functioning of modern communities? And since we’re going down that road, let’s ask another what if: What if all of the American states were based around principal watershed, from coast to coast – something even Powell didn’t consider.”

This was an interesting exercise. Your imagination might run looking at the map -- contemplating the consequences of an alternative spatial political structure. 

John Wesley Powell's map:

Is Conservation Extinct? A new look at preserving biodiversity→

Hillary Rosner, reporting for ENSIA:

“WWF’s Hoekstra likes to talk about “the pivot.”

Reactive and defensive almost by definition, conservation has long made its living by explicitly looking backward. It’s an approach that made perfect sense, for a time. “We wanted to restore a species so that it spanned the breadth of its historic range,” says Hoekstra. “We would look to the past and say, ‘We should have this much of this habitat back again, or it should look this way.’” But while this strategy may still work in certain specific cases, as an overarching vision it no longer fits. You can’t “dial back time” in a world of 9 billion people demanding water, food and energy.”

Interesting perspective that ecologists should stop using the 'past' to guide conservation, but rather look to the future or predict that future to direct today's conservation efforts. In a rapidly changing world, this approach makes sense.

Greenhouse Gas Discovered 7,100 Times Stronger Than CO2→

Report from the Environmental News Network:

“Scientists from the University of Toronto have identified a chemical in the atmosphere that appears to be a long-lived greenhouse gas that breaks all other chemical records for its potential to affect the climate.

The chemical – perfluorotributylamine, or PFTBA – is the most radiatively-efficient chemical found to date...

PFTBA is produced by humans, it does not occur naturally.

PFTBA has been in use since the mid-20th century for applications in electrical equipment. It is used in thermally and chemically stable liquids marketed for use in electronic testing and as heat transfer agents.

There are no known processes that would destroy or remove PFTBA in the lower atmosphere, so it has a very long lifetime, possibly hundreds of years. It is destroyed in the upper atmosphere.”

What we don't know often gets us into trouble, especially in systems where the burden of proof is on environmental protection agency for harm rather than for industrial compound manufactures for no harm.

What Chickadees Have That I Want. Badly→

Robert Krulwich, reporting for NPR:

“According to professor Diane Lee at Cal State University, Long Beach, every fall the part of the chickadee’s brain responsible for remembering where things are expands in volume by approximately 30 percent, stays big during the winter, and then shrinks back in the spring.”

When you study nature one finds all kind of interesting things.

NASA says ozone hole stabilizing but won't fully recover until 2070→

Tony Barboza, reporting for LA Times:

“The hole in the ozone layer is stabilizing but will take until about 2070 to fully recover, according to new research by NASA scientists.
The assessment comes more than two decades after the Montreal Protocol, the international treaty that banned chlorofluorocarbons and other compounds that deplete the ozone layer, which shields the planet from harmful ultraviolet rays.”

So the Earth's thin protective layer is predicted to take about 100 years to return to pre-pollution levels. Our ability to screw up our only place to live is without limit. Luckily politicians acted when they did. Can you imagine if the ozone hole was detected this year? Today's politicians would deny that there was a problem and radicalized citizens would argue that it was a government plot to take away their way of life! 

http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/Slides_AGUbriefing_FINAL_to_print.pdf