Energy & Environment
How is Earth doing after 40 years of Earth Days?
The following post was written for OUPBlog, the blog of Oxford University Press. This year we will celebrate Earth Day for the 43rd time. Where have we come in those years in dealing with the environment, and how has Earth’s environment fared? I have been an ecological scientist since 1965, … [Read More...]
NUCLEAR POWER: MORE EVIDENCE THAT IT IS NOT ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY.
More evidence that nuclear power is not an environmentally friendly way to go came to light today. Six underground tanks holding radioactive waste are leaking at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington. (See the New York Times article February 23, 2013 … [Read More...]
Biological Diversity
Morph The Moose
A New Symbol For Our Times! As the summer wildfire season approaches, we need to rethink how we manage forest fires. It is time to say goodbye to Smokey Bear, because suppressing all fires leads eventually to very large, intense, and disastrous fires. Most forests in the United States used … [Read More...]
An Environmental Success Story: Saving Mono Lake
Mono Lake, salty and alkaline and California’s second-largest lake, became the center of controversy in the 1970s. It supported the world’s second-largest breeding colony of California gulls and was habitat to other bird species. Mono Lake was also beautiful, a large open body of water in … [Read More...]
Global Warming & Life
Carbon Dioxide and Temperature: Who Has Led Whom?
by Daniel B. Botkin Copyright © Daniel B. Botkin 2013 As I wrote in my new book, The Moon in the Nautilus Shell, given the scientific complexities, one can only be rather agnostic about the role that human actions have played and are playing in climate change. A new, important paper in the … [Read More...]
Excerpt for Scientific American: Get Used to Climate Change
The following excerpt from The Moon in the Nautilus Shell: Discordant Harmonies Reconsidered, by Daniel B. Botkin (Oxford University Press, 2012. Copyright © 2012) appeared in Scientific American magazine on December 7, 2012. "Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot … [Read More...]
People & Nature
Bridges, Wayfarers, and Risk Assessment
By Daniel B. Botkin Copyright (c) Daniel B. Botkin 2013 Thursday, May 23, 2013, the Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River at Mount Vernon, state of Washington, collapsed. The immediate cause was a truck carrying an oversized load hitting the bridge. But a federal database had listed the … [Read More...]
NOVEL ECOSYSTEMS AND THE BALANCE OF NATURE
By Daniel B. Botkin Copyright (c) Daniel B. Botkin 2013 Two important books suggest major new ways we need to think about nature and our connection to it: Novel Ecosystems: Intervening in the New Ecological World Order by Richard Hobbs, R.J., Eric Higgs, and Carol Hall and Rambunctious Garden: … [Read More...]
