Speaking of Duke professors, Frank Stasio recently interviewed Duke University Professor of Conservation Ecology on WUNC's The State of Things. Pimm's book, The World According to Pimm, has long been on my AP Environmental book list. If you are thinking of reading the book, or have read it in the past, it's a good interview to listen to. Then go to Flyleaf and buy the book! - LINK
I'm back after a much needed and successful vacation (in which I discovered Disney World has little to no recycling going on), a fried motherboard on my 2-year old desktop, and a destructively sly virus on my laptop which managed to thwart all my attempts to eradicate it. The good news is that we now have a new desktop plus all the salvaged parts from the old one; the bad news is I am much poorer and still have no laptop - the reimaging program was down, the person who administers said program was on vacation, and our IT person at work has no administrator privileges either. School system. Enough said.
Anyway, a few weeks ago, an article appeared in the Independentfeaturing Dr. Orrin Pilkey and his son Keith. Many of you know that Dr. Pilkey is a fan favorite of Mr. Greenberg, and for good reason. Pilkey is a world famous climatologist from Duke University, whose new book is entitled Global Climate Change: A Primer. Like me and many other scientists, Pilkey is tired of the know-nothing denialists out there, and he makes no apologies about going after them in this book. Climate change is occurring, the facts are right in front of us, and we need to understand what the real hoax is - the interest groups who sow seeds of doubt and dissent for their own financial gain. And true to form, the responses in this week's Indy feature a know-nothing who claims to be smarter than Dr. Pilkey.
I've been cleaning old crap out of the basement..just took a load of old electronics parts, wires, etc. to the recycling center, with more to go later. I'm also reading Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff, a so-far wonderful description of what underlies the enormous quantity of "stuff" we purchase, consume, and dispose of. I like the idea of downshifting in my consumption, and this book is a great way to motivate me. In her introduction, she refers to Einstein's observation of paradigms, and how problems cannot be solved from within the same paradigm in which they're created. A paradigm change is needed to steer us away from the consumption-driven economy, and it is probably an enormous undertaking. Leonard reminds the reader in the intro that water is involved in almost everything we buy (I'm going to try to determine my water footprint at the link she provides, www.waterfootprint.org). She also groups those that approach the problem of consumption into several categories:
Michael Pollan, author of the book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food," appeared on NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me this weekend. Quite funny, especially when Paula Poundstone gets going about Ding Dongs :)
- Link |
Who is Riss?
Alan Rissberger "No one warned me that life would involve science, except my science teacher. But, of course, he's going to say that. He's got a job to protect."
- Stephen Colbert, I Am America (And So Can You) Wish List
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