In 1914, 53 percent of a random sample of U.S. scientists expressed disbelief or doubt in the existence of a god, a figure that rose to 67 percent by 1934. According to a July 1998 study in Nature, only seven percent of scientists in the National Academy of Sciences believed in a higher power. These statistics were brought up in…

A paper out online in the August issue of Ecology Letters presents a new index for estimating biodiversity. John Harte of UC Berkeley and his colleagues have developed a method that they say yields more precise measures of biodiversity than classic indices, such as Simpson’s and Shannon’s diversity indices. In an argument similar (but reversed) to that for quantum physics,…

Elephants have changed the ecology of Amboseli and other national parks in Kenya. Credit: David Western Research in PLoS ONE today shows that animals in Kenya’s national parks are declining at the same rate as the same species outside the parks.  This means, potentially, that the protection of animals in safe spaces may not lead to their recovery or success….

Here’s an update on the Waxman-Markey climate bill, from the latest edition of the ESA Policy News by ESA’s Policy Analyst Piper Corp. Read more at the Policy News Page. On June 26, the House voted 219-212 in favor of the Waxman-Markey climate and energy package. The bill’s success came after significant negations between Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman…

As plants become starved for CO2, rock weathering diminishes. Credit: study coauthor David Beerling Earth is currently in an ice age. (People, especially climate change naysayers, sometimes forget that.) The growth of the Antarctic ice sheet began about 25 million years ago, and by about 3 million years ago we had a full-blown ice age.  What has remained a mystery…

Academics are like turtles, pulling their heads in when reporters come knocking. An article in last week’s Chronicle of Higher Education has the best metaphor for this syndrome that I’ve heard: Scientists become turtles. They’re discouraged from media relations, and thus never get better at it, and they don’t think it’s their job.  As author Michael Munger, professor of political…

The California Condor has enjoyed a comeback despite its relative ugliness. So-called charismatic megafauna have traditionally captured the attention of the public, becoming the poster children for zoos, aquariums and conservation organizations. This public affection for attractive animals has also translated into legislation: Cuddly and economically important animals get more money under the Endangered Species Act, regardless of their level…

People love living on the coast, and one of the most destructive human infrastructure practices is replacing natural shorelines with human-made seawalls.  These walls are often tall, flat, and featureless, making them bad habitat for shore animals and plants. Biodiversity in these areas, of course, declines. In a paper published online today in Oecologia, Gee Chapman and D.J. Blockley did…

The information below was submitted by Sue Anderson of the University of Southern California. The 2010 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, an international award that honors achievements and contributions in the fields of environmental science, protection, energy and medicine, is now open for nominations. The deadline is September 15. The winner will receive a gold medallion and a $200,000 cash…

Some existing projections of global warming predict that by the year 2100, global sea levels will have risen by one meter due to polar ice cap melting and water expansion caused by rising temperatures. In a paper this week in Nature Geoscience, however, researchers determined that given our current levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, our seas should actually be 25…

In their Huffington Post blog, Todd Palmer (University of Florida) and Rob Pringle (Stanford/Harvard Fellow) took on Paul Basken of the Chronicle of Higher Education last week, who was interviewed on NPR’s Marketplace.  Palmer and Pringle say that Basken didn’t defend science’s place in the stimulus bill (formally the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), even going so far as to…

If we want to convince people to take action against global warming, maybe we need to take advice from advertising. A report by the nonprofit EcoAmerica, as reported by The New York Times in early May, suggests that terms like “greenhouse gas” and “carbon dioxide” turn people off.  Instead, they say, climate activists should change their rhetoric, emphasizing a “move…