Category: Nature

There was an interesting interview with James Lovelock in last weekend’s Guardian. His message about climate change is: "Enjoy life while you can. Because if you’re lucky, it’s going to be 20 years before it hits the fan".

 

I rather think he’s right about this no-nonsense message. Unsurprisingly, not everyone agrees. Here’s Leo Hickman telling James Lovelock to lighten up. Unfortunately, I think Hickman is the one with his head in the sand, wanting to have false hope.

There’s an excellent article in today’s Guardian that illustrates nicely why Sir David Attenborough is a National Treasure. The article is both a eulogy for Sir David and an elegy for a vanished world.

Light pollution is increasing, which means it is becoming ever more difficult to see stars in the night sky. The Globe At Night organisation is asking people around the world to take part in a survey of light pollution levels during the period from 25 Febuary to 8 March 2008. It’s quite easy to do, and I’ll be hoping for some cloudless nights to add my observations into the total.

 

(hat tip to Phil Plait for the link)

YouTube user RodHullIAmHim has provided some visuals to The Salamander’s Tale. This is a short extract from the Audiobook version of Richard Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale. The voices you hear are of Dawkins and his wife, Lalla Ward. The tale itself illustrates the phenomenon of ring species – evolution happening on a spatial dimension, rather than a time dimension. The tale ends with a typically thought-provoking twist from Dawkins, one that he explores further in his book.

 

 

Well, I attempted to see the lunar eclipse last night. There was just this slight problem of there being 100% cloud cover and mist. So I saw nothing. Bugger.

Two nights ago, we both woke up in the middle of the night on hearing a sound. It was made by something that was just outside of the bedroom window. Neither of us had ever heard anything like it. It was so strange that neither of us wanted to get out of bed and investigate the owner of the sound.

 

Thanks to Bill Oddie’s Wild Side, I’ve now found out what was screaming outside of our bedroom. It was a hedgehog. It was very angry or distressed about something. Here’s what it sounds like.

 

     

Just a heads up to say that this week sees a lunar eclipse on Wednesday night. I’m hoping that the sky will be clear enough to see it. I’m also reading up on what I need to know in order to try and photograph it.

Somehow, I don’t think goldfish are this smart. I favour the "pin and magnets under the table" theory myself…

 

 

 

(hat tip to Dangerous Intersection)

Well, I say "near-miss"… In reality, asteroid 2008 AF3 passed by the earth last night at just over the moon’s distance away. While 475,000 kilometres away may sound an awful long way, in astronomical terms that’s pretty damned close. And what I found really worrying about this was the fact that the asteroid was totally unknown until three days ago. Not a lot of time in which to kiss your arse goodbye if a big one really hits the earth…

 

Never underestimate the capacity for the human animal to fool itself – or for Marketing to take full advantage of that fact. Mind Hacks reports on a study that shows that people prefer the taste of the same wine when it is higher-priced. The same wine, but a different price tag, is enough to change the experience. The taste is obviously the same, but it’s the interpretation placed on those taste sensations by a different part of the brain that swings it.

There are Roe Deer in the woods and fields around where we live. I often catch sight of them in the far distance, or moving like ghosts through the woods, when I’m out walking the dog. Occasionally, I am quite close to them when we spot each other. One time, we suddenly came across each other in the wood, four deer and I, and we regarded each other across a distance of not more than 10 metres for what seemed like a minute before I quietly withdrew. Usually it is the deer that take flight. And almost invariably, I never have my camera with me.

 

But today, for the first time, I had the camera, and there was a group of deer in the middle distance. So here’s a shot. Not a closeup, but at least they are clearly recognisable as deer… 

 

I was watching Bill Moyer’s interview with Joseph Campbell in the first part of The Power of Myth yesterday. Campbell was expounding on his "Hero With a Thousand Faces" theory – the fact that many of the motifs in mythology are recurrent, and may have had a common source. Good stuff.

 

At one point he was describing the motion of a flowering vine as it wound up his porch in Hawaii. And then he said something that made me sit up bolt upright:

Erm, well I think it’s heliotropism, Professor Campbell. And if we’re going to redefine that as consciousness, then I reckon I’m going to have to call the thermostat on my central heating system conscious as well. Sometimes, you can have such an open mind that your brain falls out…

PZ Myers explains the recent research into flies that are mutant, bisexual and necrophiliac. Wonderfully illuminating.

I see that Google has added a new information layer to Google Earth, which displays the locations taken by the photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand. Stunning images.

Here’s a nice post from Ebonmuse that captures the feeling of connectedness with the world without the pollution of religion.

Here’s a terrific little video on a quick and dirty analysis of Climate Change, and what we should do about it. Needless to say, I support his argument. I really don’t want to live in the world of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and neither would I wish that on our descendants.

 

 

…but many people refuse to acknowledge the fact. A perfect example is the fuss currently underway over the chestnut tree in a garden at the back of the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. Let it go, and plant another one so that our descendants can see the symbol anew.

Over at BLDGBLOG, Geoff Manaugh makes a telling point about campaigns aimed at raising awareness about climate change in Climate Change Escapism. And that is that pictures showing drowned resorts or dry rivers don’t necessarily have the intended impact. There is no identifiable human suffering in them. That’s the thing that generally hits people in the solar plexus. 

Both the Dutch and the UK TV news programmes lead tonight with dire warnings about the storm that is brewing in the North Sea. A combination of high winds and high tides mean that the East cost of Britain and the Dutch coast are likely to experience the highest tides since 1953.

 

While I hope that the communities are better prepared than they were then, I am somewhat glad that we have moved to higher ground. We will see what the cold light of dawn brings.

At last I’ve managed to see Comet 17P/Holmes. Last night was the first night of clear skies since the announcement (on October 24) that the comet had suddenly increased in brightness. It’s currently in the constellation of Perseus. It looks just like a star to the naked eye (well, to my naked eye, at least), but a pair of binoculars clearly show it up as a fuzzy ball of light. Lovely!