Category: Nature

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! 

George Monbiot contributes a thoughtful, but depressing, column to today’s Guardian. It’s on the subject of the worrying environmental trends laid out in the UN’s latest Global Environmental Outlook report, published last week.

 

His sense of depression is deepened by the fact that he’s been reading Cormac McCarthy’s dystopian novel, The Road. I can’t say I blame him, it’s easy to have feelings of the inevitability of disaster when you mix a potent cocktail of the GEO report and dystopian novels. Ingredients such as Oryx and Crake or The Sheep Look Up when combined with the cold hard facts of GEO4 have a powerful effect on me as well. I become convinced that a pessimist is merely an optimist who is in full possession of the facts. As Monbiot says:

Phil, over at the Bad Astronomer blog, reports that comet 17P/Holmes has increased in brightness, from magnitude 17 to magnitude 3, literally overnight. He gives its location in the night sky (you have to be living in the Northern Hemisphere), so I’m going to hope for a cloudless sky tonight to see it. The odds are not favourable at the moment…

Interesting story of how a boy substituted echo-location ability for his missing sight.

Let it not be said that Kees Moeliker is afraid to take the search for science into areas in which others dare not tread…

I’ve hardly blogged at all during the last week. We’ve had family visiting us from Scotland, so we’ve been showing them the sights. Here’s some of the things we saw…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carolyn Porco takes us on a journey. Come along with me and wonder.

http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf 

A chance, in these last warm days of Autumn, to store energy for the final metamorphosis…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With a nod to M. C. Escher…

 

 

Sometimes, Mother Nature lets slip the mask, and shows us what she’s really capable of…

There’s a pair of Green Woodpeckers (Picus viridis) who often visit the garden. Here’s the female (recognisable by having all-black around the eyes):

 

 

And here’s the male (with a red stripe under the eye):

 

 

 

They’re both extremely shy, so it’s difficult to get close shots of them. Here’s a closer shot of the male, taken last year:

 

 

 

In the nearby woods, I often catch glimpses of Great Spotted Woodpeckers (Dendrocopos major), but today was rather special. I saw a Black Woodpecker (Dryocopus martius), the first one I’ve ever seen in my life.

PZ Myers gets somewhat hacked off by yet another fool claiming that, without god, us atheists have no free will and no morality. Dear lord, that is such a tiresome argument. As PZ says, our chemistry is beautiful, elegant and sufficient; no god need apply for the position of driving force. 

Except, of course, because of climate change, it’s the warmth-loving species that are thriving. The Central Bureau of Statistics in the Netherlands has the graph to show it. 

PZ Myers has a wonderfully clear post on what we currently know about the Hox genes, and how they influence animal morphology. Loren Petrich, in the comments thread, points out that mutation has occurred to produce the tailless Manx cat. Fascinating stuff.