Oct 06
Beltsville, Md. - For a peek at what the future holds for agriculture, go to the Agriculture Department’s sprawling research campus outside the nation’s capital and check out the stainless steel chambers in Building 10.
Resembling oversized refrigerators, the chambers simulate the atmospheric conditions plants could experience in coming decades. Inside the chambers, scientists are growing stands of both wild and conventional varieties of rice to see how they respond. |
Stalks of wild rice are protruding from the chamber that simulates the carbon dioxide levels projected for 2030. After just three weeks, the wild rice plants have grown 3 to 4 feet tall - a foot more than they do in the chamber simulating today’s atmosphere - and have filled the chamber to overflowing. |
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Oct 03
When Sarah Palin was asked by Katie Couric about whether climate change is caused by human activity, she responded, “I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate.” I immediately reaction was that she had committed a syntacical error reflective of her generally poor performance, since the meaning of her sentence is that she doesn’t blame changes in climate with affecting human activity. I was sure she meant to say that she doesn’t credit human activity with causing global warming. |
But she used the same syntax in the VP debate tonight. (I’ll post a link once a transcript becomes available, or when I get around to it.) A mistake like that is uncharacteristic of her losing but strong, composed performance. |
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Oct 01
 Imagine you go to a conference on major bioethical questions — controversial issues like abortion, embryonic stem cells, assisted reproduction and euthanasia — and a keynote speaker uses all his allotted time warning about global warming. Is this the wrong issue to discuss — or the only one worth talking about?
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The question arose at the annual conference of the European Association of Centres of Medical Ethics (EACME) that ended at the weekend in Prague. Dr. Richard Nicholson, editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics, told the assembled bioethicists they had to look beyond their usual issues to consider the far larger ecological threat he said could soon end up destroying mankind. |
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