Earth Overshoot Day

Environmental & Science Education
Sustainability
Edward Hessler

I missed posting an important date, August 2, 2017. It is known as Earth Overshoot Day and even though I'm several months late I must say something about it.
Earth Overshoot Day marks the time of year humanity uses "more ecological resources and services than nature can regenerate through overfishing, overharvesting, and emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than forests can sequester."

Earth Overshoot Day fell earlier in 2017 than ever before. In 2016, it was August 8.

Earth Overshoot Day is an average. There is a revealing graphic of Country Overshoot Days showing where EOD would land if the world's population lived liked (choose a nation).

What these dates mean is that humanity survives and lives on credit until the 31st of the year. The fact that it occurs earlier and earlier each year should be deeply troubling as should be the inequities between countries.

So, where do you think it will fall in 2018?

Friday Poem

Environmental & Science Education
Poetry
Art and Environment
Edward Hessler

Today's poem is about us. The note at the bottom is worth reading.

The poem was written by the late British poet, Adrian Mitchell.

Here are two more short poems by A. A. Milne.

Milne wrote an essay about daffodils. A few lines from it have been turned into a poem.

A house without daffodils in it
is a house lit up,
whether or not
the sun be shining outside.
Daffodils in a green bowl--
and let it snow if it will.
 --A. A. Milne

And "Daffodowndilly" (another name for daffodils).

Wolves in the Scottish Highlands?

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Biodiversity
Sustainability
Edward Hessler

Matthew Cobb, Zoology Department at the University of Manchester, UK, and also a frequent contributor to the website, Why Evolution is True, posted a request today.

"It used to be standard practice," he writes, "for final year science students to do a lab-based research project. The University of Manchester broadened project possibilities to include science media projects.

Kirsty Wells, one of Cobb's students, has produced a 20-minute video on "rewilding" (here the introduction of wolves into the Scottish Highlands, a vigorously discussed topic in the UK). She and Cobb ask for viewer feedback.

You may learn more about the request here where you will find the video and the questionnaire. For more information about Professor Cobb see here.

A Fishy Life Imagined

Environmental & Science Eduction
Nature
Children
Edward Hessler

What is it like to be a fish?

In another video from 1Minute Nature, Teun, a boy of 10 imagines what a fishy life is like.

Two Summer 2018 Institutes for Teacher Grades 4 to 8

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Water & Watersheds
Sustainability
Edward Hessler

In another century (1981), Leonard Charles, Jim Doyle, Lynn Milliman, and Victoria Stockley wrote a famous quiz published in Covevolution Quarterly (32:1): Where You At? A Bioregional Quiz.

Bioregions generally are large but all encompass two terrains, one of geography and the other of consciousness. In short, they are places that are naturally-bounded which means that the idea is flexible. It all depends on your purpose. Their idea is to help us protect, maintain and restore local environments.  So I add a question to the bioregional quiz. It is for extra-credit. What watershed do you live in?  

We live in watersheds but most of us don't think about these natural divisions of the surface of the planet and their implications for their stewardship. Many years ago John Wesley Powell did and his ideas seem much less restricted to a particular US geography and also seem to be even more relevant now.

On August 26, 2003, National Public Radio's Howard Berkes reported on the vision of John Wesley Powell. Berkes noted that "In 1878, Powell published his Report on the Lands of the Arid Region..... Powell wanted to organize settlements around water and watersheds, which would force water users to conserve the scarce resource, because overuse or pollution would hurt everyone in the watershed."

Minnesota has 80 major watersheds defined by rivers, streams, lakes and wetlands. you can easily find which one you live in here.

Fourth to eighth grade teachers can attend a Center for Global Environmental Education institute in the context of a watershed. There are two this summer and both are free.

St. Croix River Institute, June 25-27, 2018. 

Mississippi River Institute, July 23-25, 2018.



For complete information about the 2018 Rivers Institutes featuring Waters to the Sea click here. 

As A.A. Milne wrote in Winnie-the-Pooh, When you see someone putting on his Big Boots, you can be pretty sure that an Adventure is going to happen.

 

Mad Mike Hughes

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Culture
Edward Hessler

I wrote about Mad Mike quite a while ago, expecting that he'd rocket into space the following day or two. Here is an update.

It took longer than first announced but Mad Mike finally did it!

He blasted off from the planet in a self-designed and constructed steam-powered rocket he designed and went from a couple of meters from the ground to ~ 570 meters (~1870 feet) altitude. His estimated maximum speed was 350 mph (~563 kmh).

The landing was not soft and Mr. Hughes said that his back aches. "I'll feel it in the morning. I won't be able to get out of bed. At least I can go home and have dinner and see my cats tonight." He apparently didn't say anything about the earth's shape (round or frisbee shaped). He now plans to apply to run for governor of California.

Text and a video or two here.

Incredible Cantlivers

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Engineering
Culture
Edward Hessler

Twelve photographs of structures that appear to defy gravity from Architectural Digest.

One of them is the Endless Bridge from the Guthrie in Minneapolis.

Each building notes the design team, group, firm and includes a short description.

Photographs designed to provoke conversation and wonder.

Friday Poem

Environmental & Science Education
Poetry
Art and Environment
Edward Hessler

A poem by the late Jim Harrison.

Katsuko Saruhashi's Birthday

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
History of Science
Nature of Science
Edward Hessler

Today is the birthday of geochemist Katsuko Saruhashi, the first woman to receive a PhD in chemistry in Japan. She would have been 98.

She is most noted (and thanked) for her work on the dispersal of radioactive fallout from the nuclear testing program of the United States near the Marshall Islands. This research was used in banning atmospheric tests by the US and the Soviet Union. She also made early measurements of CO2 in seawater.

Dr. Saruhashi believed that scientists have a social responsibility. This led her to co-founded the Society of Japanese Women Scientists in 1958 which focused on nuclear disarmament and world peace.

This essay in Aljazeera provides a very nice summary of her life and contributions--all in bullet-points.

Google Doodle celebrates her life today. You may access the Doodle and four quotes from Dr. Saruhashi here.

Happy Birthday and thank you for your work.

North With The Spring

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Climate Change
Biodiversity
Edward Hessler

Today is the Vernal Equinox, the astronomical marker of the spring season. Today's Google Doodle (March 20 2018) celebrates this change and leads to more information. Since it is the first day of spring it is time to light out for the territory, spring is moving north and we can watch it thanks to technology.

In North with the Spring, the late naturalist Edwin Way Teale compiles a natural history of spring as he traveled just behind it's advancing front. It was first published in 1951 and was a treasure then and still is today.

Little did Teale know when he was making this journey that it would be followed many years later by a National Phenology Network which is now accessible on the web for everyone interested in checking some of the vital signs of our part of the planet.

About this year's spring, the NPN network notes that Spring continues to arrive early in the west and late in the east, compared to a long-term average (1981-2010). Spring is 22 days early in Cincinnati, and 14 days early in Baltimore. On the other side of the country, the spread of spring is still stalled from California to Washington.

Of course, we want to know when spring begins where we are as well as how it can be tracked. First appearance of the tiniest of tree leaves. Fat, swollen buds showing some green? Crocuses on lawns? Skunk cabbage? To answer this question the USA-NPN uses a Spring Leaf Index is a synthetic measure of these early season events in plants, based on recent temperature conditions. This model allows us to track the progression of spring onset across the country.

This is a data-rich site with help on accessing and using it. Interested in how spring progressed in 2017? There is a week-by-week animation linked and you might want to use that to make a visual comparison with the reports for 2018.

I like the definition of phenology found on the site. It is nature's calendar...when things happen out there in the world around us. There are challenges in recording such data, e.g., keeping records, deciding "what counts" as first signs of spring. Cindy Crosby who writes one of my very favorite blogs, Tuesdays in the Tallgrass, included this about skunk cabbage in her entry for February 27, 2018.  I love this elusive plant. Although it can poke through the snow as early as December in the Chicago region, seeing it emerge always says “spring” to me. When I was a kid it said the same thing to me.

University of Minnesota entomology professor Alexander Hodson (1906-1996) noted first leafing and flowering, a total of 14 phenological events, for woody plants on or near the St. Paul Campus of the University during a 51-year period (1941-1991). These data are archived at the University of Minnesota where you can view his original notebooks.

Such data have become more and important. The website provides a compelling reason. Changes in phenological events like flowering and animal migration are among the most sensitive biological responses to climate change. Across the world, many spring events are occurring earlier—and fall events are happening later—than they did in the past. However, not all species are changing at the same rate or direction, leading to mismatches. How plants and animals respond can help us predict whether their populations will grow or shrink – making phenology a “leading indicator” of climate change impacts.

The University of Minnesota has a Backyard Phenology project about which you may learn more  here.

 

 

Grass-Fed Beef

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Sustainability
Edward Hessler

I don't have a television and while I see it from time-to-time, depending on where I am, my viewing is sporadic at best.

One meteorologist I remember is Ginger Zee who was the chief weather forecaster for the morning weekend ABC news. Then she disappeared. I checked Wiki once and learned that she had wanted to be a meteorologist since she was eight-years-old, this after seeing a water spout. She majored in meteorology and mathematics and achieved her childhood dream.

I recently saw a video-essay she did on grass-fed beef cattle for an episode of Food Forecast. Here it is.

Antelope Deaths in Kazakhstan

Environmental & Science Education
Biodiversity
Sustainability
Climate Change
Nature of Science
Edward Hessler

In 2015, in just two days, 80 percent of a herd of Saiga antelope in Kazakhstan died. Two days later the entire herd was dead.

The government team which witnessed these deaths was there for a different reason. They were collecting data on calving success in a herd of this endangered species, one of the most endangered of mammals. It was soon learned that these deaths were widespread. In another area of Kazakhstan 200,000 died in a month's time. This represented two-thirds of the entire global population.

There are two triggers to the long-term decline of the Saiga, both profoundly related to humans. One is the collapse of an economy due to deep and sweeping social change. It led to extreme poaching. The most recent trigger appears to be that between humans and global climate change.

This video shows how scientists approached the cause of sudden respiratory death, squeezing everything they could from the evidence. 

For more information, especially about this magnificent antelope see the Saiga Conservation Alliance. Saiga evolved under very extreme winter and summer conditions.

Friday Poem

Environmental & Science Education
Poetry
Art and Environment
Edward Hessler

Today's poem is by Wendell Berry.

h/t and thanks to 3 Quarks Daily (Jim Culleny, the blog's poet)

Pi Day and More

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Astronomy
Math
Cosmology
Edward Hessler

Today is pi day, March 14 (you recall pi: 3.14... and its use in geometry. It is our favorite or most remembered irrational number.)

Interestingly, it is also Albert Einstein's birthday.

And today is the day that Stephen Hawking died. You may recall that when he was 20 years old, he was told that he didn't have long to live. He had Lou Gehrig's disease (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis). Hawking lived to age 76 and was busy to the end.

Here are some facts about Pi day and hints on how it is celebrated.

And here is the web page for Pi day.

There will be much written about Stephen Hawking today. I went immediately to one of my very favorite writers on theoretical physics, Dr. Sabine Hossenfeld, who has written a loving and informed tribute to Professor Hawking. Read it...scan it at least, for an idea of his contributions, one of which was to show that there is still some unfinished business in physics--the need for a theory of quantum gravity if we are to have a full understanding of nature.

There are many words one could use to describe him. I'd be hard pressed to pick one but determination comes to mind.  I heard him speak at the University of Minnesota in another century. Coffman Auditorium was packed. I was glad to be there. I still remember his remarkable and engaging sense of humor but not much else!

I include a talk by theoretician Sean Carroll on  "What Would Stephen Hawking Do?" Please listen to the first few minutes. Carroll tells a very funny story about first meeting Hawking. The entire talk is only about 12 minutes long and Carroll is a great speaker.

Year of the Bird--March

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Biodiversity
Sustainability
Edward Hessler

I forget that this is the Year of the Bird, the centennial of the most important bird protection legislation ever passed, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. A time to celebrate birds and also to protect them with an eye to their future (and ours).

The Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University will post monthly actions. March is the month to make our corners of the world more bird friendly. The March site, Habitat Network provides some ideas and resources to help accomplish this: the local ecoregion in which we live, native plants, native pollinators, local experts, photographs, America as an average American yard,  "and more."

I will try to post the Cornell updates regularly.

Extraordinary Moments: World Press Photo Contest

Environmental & Science Education
Culture
Society
Pollution
Poverty
Children
Solid Waste
Water & Watersheds
Miscellaneous
Edward Hessler


NPR's Courtney Columbus writes that "photographers from 125 countries submitted more than 73,000 photos for this year's World Press Photo contest. Jurors narrowed that number down to six pictures that have been nominated for the World Press Photo of the Year."

She included some of the photographs here where you may also link to the World Press Photo contest site and see more. The photographs move at a nice pace across the screen so there is no need to click and click and click. 

The photographs were submitted by more than 40 photographers and among the categories are environment, people and general news.

Friday Poem

Environmental & Science Education
Art and Environment
Poetry
Edward Hessler

Edgar Lee Masters wrote a book of free-verse epitaphs that created a sensation when it was published in 1915. It was forthright about everything as well as often cynical. Masters was never able to surpass the publication of the Spoon River Anthology.

Here is one poem from that volume, Anne Rutledge.

Two Hundred Years of "Frankenstein"

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Culture
Ethics
History of Science
Nature of Science
Technology
Edward Hessler

"It's alive!" The scene and the words remain one of my all time favorites. The book on which the film was based has had a long shelf life and hold on our imagination.

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley's "Frankenstein; or, the Modern Promethesus," was published anonymously on January 1, 1818. It was in 1923 when it was published in France that her name appeared as the author. She started writing it when she was 18 and she was 20 when it was first published.

Arizona State University is serving as the hub celebrating the bicentennial of the writing and publication of Shelly's book, 2016-2018.

According to The Frankenstein Bicentennial Project's website, "No work of literature has done more to shape the way people imagine science and its moral consequences than Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus. Mary Shelley's enduring tale of creation and responsibility. The novel's themes and tropes--such as the complex dynamic between creator and creation--continue to resonate with contemporary audiences. Frankenstein continues to influence the way we confront emerging technologies, conceptualize the process of scientific research, imagine the motivations and ethical struggles of scientists, and weigh the benefits of innovation with its unforeseen pitfalls."

At this website you can view a trailer for Frankenstein 200, an interactive, multimedia for kids (of all ages), read Frankenbook where you can view, discuss and respond to an annotated version of the text by 60 scholars and subject matter experts who annotated the original text, and view, purchase as well as read a PDF of Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers and Creators of All Kinds (M.I.T. Press).

Frankenstein 200 is being shown at over 50 museums and science centers across the U. S. One of the advisors is the Bakken Museum, Minneapolis.

The site includes media coverage, too. I've read only one of these and strongly recommend it. The essay is found in The New Yorker Issue, February 12 & 19, 2018 and is titled "It's Still Alive" in the print edition. The edition found under the media coverage is titled "The Strange and Twisted Life of Frankenstein." Don't ask me why. They are the same content.

In her deep dive into Frankenstein, New Yorker writer and Harvard historian, Jill Lepore notes that the M.I.T. version "is a way to make use of the novel," i.e., as a cautionary tale about science and technology. See, for example, this cover from The Week (January 26, 2018). Lepore calls attention to one of the M.I.T. edition's footnotes in response to Victor about the creature's murders. "The remorse Victor expresses is reminiscent of J. Robert Oppenheimer's sentiments when he witnessed the unspeakable power of the atomic bomb....Scientists' responsibility must be engaged before their creations are unleashed."

Lepore points out and discusses many of the moral and political ambiguities of the book, including Shelley's nudging of the "reader's sympathy" for the suffering of the monster. I was interested to learn that on the theatrical playbill listing the cast of the first stage production of "Frankenstein" in 1823 (London) the monster was designated as "-----------." Shelly found this "rather good," a vein Lepore opens and explores.

Nature Moments

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Biodiversity
Behavior
Edward Hessler

Professor Nathaniel Wheelwright (Bowdoin College) produces a weekly series of short videos designed to introduce us to common plants and animals and ecological concepts around us. While these are shot in the Northeast United States, mostly Brunswick, Maine, they also have use elsewhere, certainly in our part of the world.

He is also the co-author with Bernd Heinrich of The Naturalist's Notebook, which encourages people to  observe and record their observations a five-year calendar journal. The site includes a link describing the video series.

In the video, I was very pleased to see the reference Wheelwright makes to Anna Botsford Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study, a favorite and wonderful book. Please note what she has to say about the book's content. It may help to know that this was made during a time when nature study constituted much of the school curriculum in science.

Here is one of Wheelwright's Nature Moments, A Deer's Day.

Friday Poem

Environmental & Science Education
Poetry
Art and Environment
Edward Hessler

Today's poem is a welcome to March by Emily Dickinson.

First Flight

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Biodiversity
Culture
Edward Hessler

I've watched this video quite a few times.

I first saw it on a newscast where the beginning and ending had been clipped. This appears to be the full version and I love every bit of it, from the pilot patting the seat to indicate to his passenger, a young rescued chimp where she might sit to the next "frame" when the passenger has decided where she is going to sit throughout the flight, her interest in something at the end of the flight panel, to the end where she jumps into the arms of a person waiting to greet and care for her.

Mussa is an alert, interested, polite and sometimes sleepy passenger. I wonder about her experience of this flight, what interests her below and what she sees thinks about as she takes off, flies and lands. The pilot clearly delights in the time he has with her.

I wish Mussa well.

A Big Why Question

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Astronomy
Cosmology
History of Science
Nature of Science
Culture
Edward Hessler

I'D LIKE --

I'd like to know 

what this whole show 

is about 

before it's out.

--Piet Hein 

I've used this Grook in at least one other post (maybe others). However, it is a perfect introduction to a very large question.

And the answer to Hein's wish is that we may never know. 

No doubt you have looked up at night--the classic astronomer's pose--and wondered about where this place came from. Was there anything before it?  Where is it going? 

There is some confidence on where we are going in the very, very, very, very long term. Based on considerable evidence the universe will continue it's indefinite expansion leading to the hypothesis known as "the Big Freeze."  There are other hypotheses, of course: the Big Crunch, the Big Change and the Big Rip.  Right now it is going to be cold and dark (but not for a few years). And this will occur long after this planet is here or any of the planets or even the stars.

Theoretician Sean Carroll (CalTech) is a physicist who has been thinking about one of the really big why questions from the beginning of his career.  The question: Why is there something, rather than nothing?

Carroll's thoughtful answer is to be published in the Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Physics, edited by Eleanor Knox and Alastair Wilson. In the meantime he has posted his penultimate draft in a physics repository known as the arxiv. His answer hasn't changed but in this chapter he notes he has done a much more careful job than previously.  Below is the abstract.

It seems natural to ask why the universe exists at all. Modern physics suggests that the universe can exist all by itself as a self-contained system, without anything external to create or sustain it. But there might not be an absolute answer to why it exists. I argue that any attempt to account for the existence of something rather than nothing must ultimately bottom out in a set of brute facts; the universe simply is, without ultimate cause or explanation.

Carroll writes a blog (Preposterous Universe) and in the entry notifying readers of this forthcoming publication Carroll has a sentence that is important to understanding how scientists go about their work. "The right question to ask isn’t “Why did this happen?”, but “Could this have happened in accordance with the laws of physics?” This is the question a scientist asks. And Carroll's answer is blunt about our responsibility facing an answer we may not like. "It’s up to us as a species to cultivate the intellectual maturity to accept that some questions don’t have the kinds of answers that are designed to make us feel satisfied."

Carroll's blog entry about this chapter includes access to two previous entries on this topic and to the chapter posted on the physics website, arxiv.  Some of the article makes use of some heavy duty maths (for most of us or maybe just me) but if you want to get an idea of how a physicist thinks about this problem, it is worth skimming the chapter and noting subheadings, dipping in here and there when something attracts you.

For a short profile of Carroll see here. 

Friday Poem

Environmental & Science Education
Poetry
Art and Environment
Edward Hessler

Well it isn't February but March is so close for this poem by Denise Levertov. She served as a nurse in World War II.

Spring! Celebration One

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Earth Science
Earth Systems
Astronomy
Edward Hessler

Spring! Today? Yep!

It depends on who is defining it.

Meteorologists/climatologists or astronomers.

March 1 is Meteorological Spring, the season lasts for three months, then Meteorological Summer arrives on June 1, Meteorological Fall on September 1 and Meteorological Winter on December 1. Astronomical Spring/Spring or Vernal Equinoix arrives March 20, 11:15 am in St. Paul, MN (Celebration Two).

For some of us events that count have been the return of light about a month ago and now heat.

Astronomers define spring as the time when the sun is directly over the equator. Meteorologists and climatologists came to prefer calendar months as explained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 

Meteorological observing and forecasting led to the creation of these seasons, and they are more closely tied to our monthly civil calendar than the astronomical seasons are. The length of the meteorological seasons is also more consistent, ranging from 90 days for winter of a non-leap year to 92 days for spring and summer. By following the civil calendar and having less variation in season length and season start, it becomes much easier to calculate seasonal statistics from the monthly statistics, both of which are very useful for agriculture, commerce, and a variety of other purposes.

Here is a fact sheet on differences between the two seasons including a diagram that may have confused you in school, perhaps still does. There are also a variety of links.

Happy Springs, #1 and #2.