Global Warming New York | Search results for "animals"

Researchers assess the risk of species extinction with conservation models that combine factors that drive down populations--including habitat loss, hunting and overfishing--with the probability of chance disasters affecting the group. Even if human activities greatly affect a species, “all populations that go extinct [ultimately] suffer a string of unfortunate random events, such as a fire, that wipe out the last individuals,” says Brett Melbourne, a mathematical ecologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Until recently, mathematical models of extinction risk included only two types of randomness. The first--variability in the environment, such as rainfall or temperature changes--impacts birth and death rates across the entire population. The second involves random events affecting select individuals within a group. Siblings may have the same probability of dying in a given year, for example, but only one may be lost to, say, an accidental drowning or other chance event. [More] Life at the Poles: Eight Polar Animals That Face the Promise and Peril of Climate Change Polar bears and penguins get all the attention but there's more than large, fuzzy and feathered animals thriving at the frozen antipodes of our planet. Both of Earth's polar environments host rich webs of plants and animals--and all of these inhabitants face a changing clime. [More]

Tags: event, population, polar, animals, extinction

For the past three years, botanist Vicki Funk of the Smithsonian Institution has been trying, unsuccessfully, to transfer select leaf specimens from Brazil to the U.S. National Herbarium for identification. Comparing closely related plants “is the bread and butter of systematics,” she explains. “We need stuff from other places.” But as biodiversity becomes a valuable commodity, developing countries have complicated efforts to collect and analyze biological samples, Funk says: “It doesn’t matter if you’re an academic, not a drug company. You’re treated the same.” In 1992 the twin goals of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, signed by more than 150 countries, were to preserve biodiversity and to ensure tropical nations were compensated for any “genetic resources” leading to drug discoveries for developed nations. But even as those goals were reaffirmed at a conference held this past spring in Bonn, Germany, scientists continue to criticize policies stemming from the convention. The claim is that the international agreement, which gave countries ownership of plants and animals inside their borders, is hindering tropical research and conservation, not facilitating them. [More] Genetically Modified Hawaii Just beyond the defunct Koloa Sugar Mill on the Hawaiian island of Kauai's south shore are acres of cornfields that have sprouted over the past decade in a state made famous by its pineapples, bananas and sugarcane crops. Slightly out of place in the Aloha State, they otherwise look quite conventional, although in fact they are not: The crop is among a bounty of others in the state that are grown from seeds that have been genetically engineered or modified (GM) to produce sturdier plants able to withstand weather and disease as well as thrive in the face of insects and chemicals sprayed on them to kill destructive weeds. In front of one plot of corn stalks is a red and white sign warning, "Danger: pesticides. Keep out." Tacked to it is a list containing 15 chemicals that may have been applied to the crop. In this case, the chemicals circled are the herbicides pendimethalin (brand name: Prowl), dicamba (Banvel) and atrazine, the latter of which is banned in the European Union (E.U.) because of its link to birth defects in frogs that live in groundwater contaminated with it. [More]

Tags: crop, countries, chemicals, nations, state

Polar bears and penguins get all the attention but there's more than large, fuzzy and feathered animals thriving at the frozen antipodes of our planet. Both of Earth's polar environments host rich webs of plants and animals--and all of these inhabitants face a changing clime. [More] Will the Opening of the Northwest Passage Transform Global Shipping Anytime Soon? It is said that the Inuit have many words for snow, but when it comes to the Northwest Passage only one type of frozen water matters: multiyear ice. It can slice through the hull of a ship like a knife through butter and it persists in the passage's waters despite unprecedented warming in the Arctic Ocean, thwarting shippers in search of a shortcut between Europe and Asia. The fabled Northwest Passage has made headlines ever since it thawed last year for the first time. For three centuries the quest for an expedited route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans rivaled today's space race, with European superpowers vying for the prize. Hundreds of sailors and countless expeditions ventured into Canada's Arctic waters, including such naval luminaries as Sir Francis Drake, Captain James Cook and the ill-fated Henry Hudson, who left his name--and lost his life--on the Canadian bay that marks its entrance. [More]

Tags: passage, northwest, water, animals, polar

Polar bears and penguins get all the attention but there's more than large, fuzzy and feathered animals thriving at the frozen antipodes of our planet. Both of Earth's polar environments host rich webs of plants and animals--and all of these inhabitants face a changing clime. [More] Will the Opening of the Northwest Passage Transform Global Shipping Anytime Soon? It is said that the Inuit have many words for snow, but when it comes to the Northwest Passage only one type of frozen water matters: multiyear ice. It can slice through the hull of a ship like a knife through butter and it persists in the passage's waters despite unprecedented warming in the Arctic Ocean, thwarting shippers in search of a shortcut between Europe and Asia. The fabled Northwest Passage has made headlines ever since it thawed last year for the first time. For three centuries the quest for an expedited route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans rivaled today's space race, with European superpowers vying for the prize. Hundreds of sailors and countless expeditions ventured into Canada's Arctic waters, including such naval luminaries as Sir Francis Drake, Captain James Cook and the ill-fated Henry Hudson, who left his name--and lost his life--on the Canadian bay that marks its entrance. [More]

Tags: passage, northwest, water, animals, polar

Polar bears and penguins get all the attention but there's more than large, fuzzy and feathered animals thriving at the frozen antipodes of our planet. Both of Earth's polar environments host rich webs of plants and animals--and all of these inhabitants face a changing clime. [More] Will the Opening of the Northwest Passage Transform Global Shipping Anytime Soon? It is said that the Inuit have many words for snow, but when it comes to the Northwest Passage only one type of frozen water matters: multiyear ice. It can slice through the hull of a ship like a knife through butter and it persists in the passage's waters despite unprecedented warming in the Arctic Ocean, thwarting shippers in search of a shortcut between Europe and Asia. The fabled Northwest Passage has made headlines ever since it thawed last year for the first time. For three centuries the quest for an expedited route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans rivaled today's space race, with European superpowers vying for the prize. Hundreds of sailors and countless expeditions ventured into Canada's Arctic waters, including such naval luminaries as Sir Francis Drake, Captain James Cook and the ill-fated Henry Hudson, who left his name--and lost his life--on the Canadian bay that marks its entrance. [More]

Tags: passage, northwest, water, animals, polar

[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.] Animals that live in cold climates tend to have stubby limbs--shorter arms and legs--even smaller ears and tails. Picture a penguin and you’ll see what I mean. Biologists have long assumed that these stumpy appendages are an evolutionary adaptation. Shorter extremities minimize heat loss, so animals that are more compact are better suited to the cold. [More] Carbon Dioxide and Climate Editor's Note: We are posting this article from our July 1959 issue to offer an historical perspective on some of the issues being discussed at the United Nations Framework Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland, which began December 1 and runs through December 12. The theories that explain worldwide climate change are almost as varied as the weather. The more familiar ones attribute changes of climate to Olympian forces that range from geological upheavals and dust-belching volcanoes to long-term variations in the radiation of the sun and eccentricities in the orbit of the earth. Only the so-called carbon dioxide theory takes account of the possibility that human activities may have some effect on climate. This theory suggests that in the present century man is unwittingly raising the temperature of the earth by his industrial and agricultural activities. [More]

Tags: climate, theory, activities, shorter, long

Researchers assess the risk of species extinction with conservation models that combine factors that drive down populations--including habitat loss, hunting and overfishing--with the probability of chance disasters affecting the group. Even if human activities greatly affect a species, “all populations that go extinct [ultimately] suffer a string of unfortunate random events, such as a fire, that wipe out the last individuals,” says Brett Melbourne, a mathematical ecologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Until recently, mathematical models of extinction risk included only two types of randomness. The first--variability in the environment, such as rainfall or temperature changes--impacts birth and death rates across the entire population. The second involves random events affecting select individuals within a group. Siblings may have the same probability of dying in a given year, for example, but only one may be lost to, say, an accidental drowning or other chance event. [More] Life at the Poles: Eight Polar Animals That Face the Promise and Peril of Climate Change Polar bears and penguins get all the attention but there's more than large, fuzzy and feathered animals thriving at the frozen antipodes of our planet. Both of Earth's polar environments host rich webs of plants and animals--and all of these inhabitants face a changing clime. [More]

Tags: event, population, polar, animals, extinction

When the world's governments gather in December 2009 in Copenhagen to negotiate a treaty to restrain global greenhouse gas emissions, the science on which they base their decision could be as much as four years out of date. The United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) offered its synthesis of existing research in February 2007 and it was based on studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals only through 2005. [More] Life at the Poles: Eight Polar Animals That Face the Promise and Peril of Climate Change Polar bears and penguins get all the attention but there's more than large, fuzzy and feathered animals thriving at the frozen antipodes of our planet. Both of Earth's polar environments host rich webs of plants and animals--and all of these inhabitants face a changing clime. [More]

Tags: polar, animals, climate, change, science

Researchers assess the risk of species extinction with conservation models that combine factors that drive down populations--including habitat loss, hunting and overfishing--with the probability of chance disasters affecting the group. Even if human activities greatly affect a species, “all populations that go extinct [ultimately] suffer a string of unfortunate random events, such as a fire, that wipe out the last individuals,” says Brett Melbourne, a mathematical ecologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Until recently, mathematical models of extinction risk included only two types of randomness. The first--variability in the environment, such as rainfall or temperature changes--impacts birth and death rates across the entire population. The second involves random events affecting select individuals within a group. Siblings may have the same probability of dying in a given year, for example, but only one may be lost to, say, an accidental drowning or other chance event. [More] Life at the Poles: Eight Polar Animals That Face the Promise and Peril of Climate Change Polar bears and penguins get all the attention but there's more than large, fuzzy and feathered animals thriving at the frozen antipodes of our planet. Both of Earth's polar environments host rich webs of plants and animals--and all of these inhabitants face a changing clime. [More]

Tags: event, population, polar, animals, extinction

Researchers assess the risk of species extinction with conservation models that combine factors that drive down populations--including habitat loss, hunting and overfishing--with the probability of chance disasters affecting the group. Even if human activities greatly affect a species, “all populations that go extinct [ultimately] suffer a string of unfortunate random events, such as a fire, that wipe out the last individuals,” says Brett Melbourne, a mathematical ecologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Until recently, mathematical models of extinction risk included only two types of randomness. The first--variability in the environment, such as rainfall or temperature changes--impacts birth and death rates across the entire population. The second involves random events affecting select individuals within a group. Siblings may have the same probability of dying in a given year, for example, but only one may be lost to, say, an accidental drowning or other chance event. [More] Life at the Poles: Eight Polar Animals That Face the Promise and Peril of Climate Change Polar bears and penguins get all the attention but there's more than large, fuzzy and feathered animals thriving at the frozen antipodes of our planet. Both of Earth's environments host rich webs of plants and animals--and all of these inhabitants face a changing clime. [More]

Tags: event, population, polar, animals, extinction

Polar bears and penguins get all the attention but there's more than large, fuzzy and feathered animals thriving at the frozen antipodes of our planet. Both of Earth's polar environments host rich webs of plants and animals--and all of these inhabitants face a changing clime. [More] Will the Opening of the Northwest Passage Transform Global Shipping Anytime Soon? It is said that the Inuit have many words for snow, but when it comes to the Northwest Passage only one type of frozen water matters: multiyear ice. It can slice through the hull of a ship like a knife through butter and it persists in the passage's waters despite unprecedented warming in the Arctic Ocean, thwarting shippers in search of a shortcut between Europe and Asia. The fabled Northwest Passage has made headlines ever since it thawed last year for the first time. For three centuries the quest for an expedited route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans rivaled today's space race, with European superpowers vying for the prize. Hundreds of sailors and countless expeditions ventured into Canada's Arctic waters, including such naval luminaries as Sir Francis Drake, Captain James Cook and the ill-fated Henry Hudson, who left his name--and lost his life--on the Canadian bay that marks its entrance. [More]

Tags:

Polar bears and penguins get all the attention but there's more than large, fuzzy and feathered animals thriving at the frozen antipodes of our planet. Both of Earth's polar environments host rich webs of plants and animals--and all of these inhabitants face a changing clime. [More] Will the Opening of the Northwest Passage Transform Global Shipping Anytime Soon? It is said that the Inuit have many words for snow, but when it comes to the Northwest Passage only one type of frozen water matters: multiyear ice. It can slice through the hull of a ship like a knife through butter and it persists in the passage's waters despite unprecedented warming in the Arctic Ocean, thwarting shippers in search of a shortcut between Europe and Asia. The fabled Northwest Passage has made headlines ever since it thawed last year for the first time. For three centuries the quest for an expedited route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans rivaled today's space race, with European superpowers vying for the prize. Hundreds of sailors and countless expeditions ventured into Canada's Arctic waters, including such naval luminaries as Sir Francis Drake, Captain James Cook and the ill-fated Henry Hudson, who left his name--and lost his life--on the Canadian bay that marks its entrance. [More]

Tags:

Polar bears and penguins get all the attention but there's more than large, fuzzy and feathered animals thriving at the frozen antipodes of our planet. Both of Earth's polar environments host rich webs of plants and animals--and all of these inhabitants face a changing clime. [More] Will the Opening of the Northwest Passage Transform Global Shipping Anytime Soon? It is said that the Inuit have many words for snow, but when it comes to the Northwest Passage only one type of frozen water matters: multiyear ice. It can slice through the hull of a ship like a knife through butter and it persists in the passage's waters despite unprecedented warming in the Arctic Ocean, thwarting shippers in search of a shortcut between Europe and Asia. The fabled Northwest Passage has made headlines ever since it thawed last year for the first time. For three centuries the quest for an expedited route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans rivaled today's space race, with European superpowers vying for the prize. Hundreds of sailors and countless expeditions ventured into Canada's Arctic waters, including such naval luminaries as Sir Francis Drake, Captain James Cook and the ill-fated Henry Hudson, who left his name--and lost his life--on the Canadian bay that marks its entrance. [More]

Tags:

Pioneering ecologist Joseph Grinnell in 1914 began a seven year survey of the animals living in Yosemite National Park in California. Even then, human impacts such as the transformation of the Central Valley into an agricultural oasis were changing the landscape and the animals who lived there. [More] Bad Biodiversity Ups West Nile Odds [The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.] If you're worried about news reports of West Nile virus, you might want to go take a census of the birds in your backyard. Because certain species of birds actually help the virus thrive. And they're not exactly exotic jungle fowl. In fact, they’re our more familiar feathered friends. [More]

Tags: virus, nile, west, birds, animals

Wandering the aisles of a supermarket several years ago, one of us (Hebert) marveled at how the store could keep track of the array of merchandise simply by examining the varying order of thick and thin lines that make up a product’s barcode. Why, he mused, couldn’t the unique ordering of the four nucleic acids in a short strand of DNA be mined in a similar way to identify the legions of species on earth? Ever since Carl Linnaeus began systematically classifying all living things 250 years ago, biologists have looked at various features--color, shape, even behavior--to identify animals and plants. In the past few decades, researchers have begun to apply the genetic information in DNA to the task. But both classical and modern genetic methods demand great expertise and eat up huge amounts of time. Using just a small section of the DNA--something more akin to the 12-digit barcode on products--would require far less time and skill. [More] The X Chromosome and the Case against Monogamy Researchers report genetic evidence bolstering the socially contentious idea that polygyny--the mating practice where some males dominate reproduction by fathering children with several women--was the norm for sexual behavior throughout human history and prehistory. Because polygyny means other men father few or no children, the study, published today in PLoS Genetics, also shows that, on average, women bequeath more genes to their offspring than men do.  [More]

Tags: dna, genetic, behavior, identify, barcode

Polar bears and penguins get all the attention but there's more than large, fuzzy and feathered animals thriving at the frozen antipodes of our planet. Both of Earth's polar environments host rich webs of plants and animals--and all of these inhabitants face a changing clime. [More] Reviews: The Superorganism Quantum Ten: A Story of Passion, Tragedy, Ambition, and Scienceby Sheilla Jones. Oxford University Press, 2008 [More]

Tags:

Polar bears and penguins get all the attention but there's more than large, fuzzy and feathered animals thriving at the frozen antipodes of our planet. Both of Earth's polar environments host rich webs of plants and animals--and all of these inhabitants face a changing clime. [More] Will the Opening of the Northwest Passage Transform Global Shipping Anytime Soon? It is said that the Inuit have many words for snow, but when it comes to the Northwest Passage only one type of frozen water matters: multiyear ice. It can slice through the hull of a ship like a knife through butter and it persists in the passage's waters despite unprecedented warming in the Arctic Ocean, thwarting shippers in search of a shortcut between Europe and Asia. The fabled Northwest Passage has made headlines ever since it thawed last year for the first time. For three centuries the quest for an expedited route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans rivaled today's space race, with European superpowers vying for the prize. Hundreds of sailors and countless expeditions ventured into Canada's Arctic waters, including such naval luminaries as Sir Francis Drake, Captain James Cook and the ill-fated Henry Hudson, who left his name--and lost his life--on the Canadian bay that marks its entrance. [More]

Tags:

Rain forests and tundra, deserts and savannas, mountaintops and undersea reefs. No spot on the planet is too remote for the movement that has changed the face of leisure travel. Ecotourism, in all its various guises--green tourism, sustainable tourism, adventure travel--has gained traction as enthusiasts seek to experience the earth’s wonders while treading lightly on them. Lately a new subset of this boom has emerged. “Voluntourism” ramps the ecological impulse up a notch, providing ways for vacationers to help save the world’s sustainable resources. The trend has been described as a kind of mini version of the Peace Corps. Depending on your interests, you could find yourself repairing trails leading to Old Faithful, tracking sharks in the Atlantic, or mixing cement for housing in the Andes. Voluntourism is becoming a significant growth sector of the travel industry. Online trip planner Travelocity, for example, now partners with tour operators such as GlobeAware, Cross-Cultural Solutions and Take Pride in America, which specialize in launching voluntourists on service-oriented vacations. [More] New Homes on the Range: Species Shift Across Yosemite Pioneering ecologist Joseph Grinnell in 1914 began a seven year survey of the animals living in Yosemite National Park in California. Even then, human impacts such as the transformation of the Central Valley into an agricultural oasis were changing the landscape and the animals who lived there. [More]

Tags:

The compulsion to live green in the extreme is, to some people, a lifestyle that involves reusing Ziploc bags for a year and unplugging the family refrigerator. Candidates Agree on Need to Address Global Warming John McCain and Barack Obama both say that the Bush administration’s policies on global have been far too weak.

Tags: warming, global, green, john, candidates

Editor's Note: This story was originally published in the May 2003 issue of Scientific American. The world lost the creators of two of its most celebrated biohoaxes recently: Douglas Herrick, father of the risibly ridiculous (half jackrabbit, half antelope), and Ray L. Wallace, paternal guardian of the less absurd Bigfoot. The jackalope enjoins laughter in response to such peripheral hokum as hunting licenses sold only to those whose IQs range between 50 and 72, bottles of the rare but rich jackalope milk, and additional evolutionary hybrids such as the jackapanda. Bigfoot, on the other hand, while occasionally eliciting an acerbic snicker, enjoys greater plausibility for a simple evolutionary reason: large hirsute apes currently roam the forests of Africa, and at least one species of a giant ape--Gigantopithecus-- flourished some hundreds of thousands of years ago alongside our ancestors. [More] Fact or Fiction?: Animals Like to Get Drunk Stories abound about animals who have taken a nip--or 10. In 2004, Reuters reported that a black bear had passed out at the Baker Lake Resort in Washington State after binging on beer. Last October the Associated Press recounted a tale of six Indian elephants stumbling around and uprooting a utility pole, electrocuting themselves, after guzzling a homemade rice brew in the northeastern state of Meghalaya. Even Charles Darwin noted in The Descent of Man that monkeys have a “strong taste” for “spirituous liquors” and beer. Still, there is scant scientific evidence proving that animals go on benders with the naturally occurring alcohol in fermenting fruit. Quite the contrary: the few studies done seemed to indicate they had either no interest or a distinct aversion to it.  But new research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that at least a few creatures in the wilds of the Malaysian rainforest like to drink the hard stuff. [More]

Tags: jackalope, animals, evolutionary, scientific, state