Unused shared bikes in Xiamen, China Credit: Reuters from The Atlantic
Bike sharing rentals seemed like a great idea and many millions of these bicycles were manufactured in China, clogging sidewalks and streets. Excess bikes numbering in the millions were rounded up and scrapped. This created tons of non-recyclable waste. This was a tiny trickle of the over 2 billion tons of waste created annually world-wide. Every year another 13 million tons of waste plastic enters our oceans. In less than 20 years, there will be more tons of plastic in the ocean than tons of fish. Methane is a powerful gre
It may be more remarkable that nearly half of adults accept that extraterrestrials are sharing our friendly skies. Wishful thinking? Underlying fears? Groupthink? Popular TV shows? “The truth is out there” … but it’s not likely to be what David Grusch would have us
The HangOut at the SF Zoo with Livia Edwords was a big success, with 23 people attending. We got a number of fresh faces, which is always good. Some folk responded from affiliate MeetUp groups.
Livia Edwords did a great job telling us about the animals, zoos, and her experiences as a zoo keeper there. We got a special treat when she ran into one of her old zoo keeper friends on his way to take care of the koalas. We got a truly up close and personal visit with one of his charges. Yeah, they're just as cute as the pictures suggest and with incredibly soft and thick fur.
Have you ever heard of Eunice Foote? No? She’s someone we all should know more about, and she was the subject of the Google Doodle on July 17th (pictured above), on what would have been her 204th birthday!
Eunice was a women’s rights activist. She was the first woman to be published in a physics journal. In 1856 she wrote “Circumstances Affecting the Heat of Sun’s Rays”, a paper that laid out the basics of climate science. Three years after the publication, scientist John Tyndall would be credited for laying this groundwork, not Foote. It wasn’t until the 2010s that her work began to be recognized.
I do have to admit that it is easy to accept claims when the evidence is plentiful yet still anecdotal and usually has no evidence to support it. I suggest that this may not be the best way to collect data and arrive at conclusions though. This is how many “misperceptions” gain traction and become, shall we sa
I hope you are looking forward to the longest day of the year this week. This Tuesday June 21 at 7:57 AM marks the spot where the sun will be a its northernmost point for the year. It will rise about 5:47 AM and set at 8:34 PM. This marks the end of spring, and the beginning of summer with the longest day of the year. It will be 14 hours 47 minutes between sunrise and sunset or 5 hours 14 minutes longer than it was at its' shortest just 6 months ago. I often wonder how things were figured out before we had the benefits of so many great scientists and equipment.
