This post was contributed by ESA’s Director of Public Affairs, Nadine Lymn. While other voices boldly make authoritative assertions over issues that may be deeply nuanced, scientists tend to communicate their considerable knowledge in ways which make them sound wishy-washy at best and completely uncertain at worst. This was the theme of a symposium session, “Global Sustainability in the Face…
Program Chair Scott Franklin and ESA President Sunny Power at the scientific plenary and ESA Awards session. This post was contributed by ESA’s Director of Public Affairs, Nadine Lymn. At the start of this morning’s Scientific Plenary & ESA Awards Session, ESA President Alison “Sunny” Power gave her State of the Society address. Much like the U.S. presidential “State of the…
The ESA meeting kicked off last night with the opening plenary session and presentation of the ESA Regional Policy Award. ESA’s Director Katherine McCarter welcomed everyone to the meeting, citing the fact that her first ESA meeting as director was also in Albuquerque in 1997. She pointed out that the meeting’s theme, “Ecological Knowledge and a Global Sustainable Society,” is…
ESA released a position statement today on the proper place of ecological and environmental capital in the nation’s economy. As the United States and much of the world try to recover from the current economic crisis, ESA recommends that long-term sustainability should be prioritized in the restructuring of business models and economic growth. A key to this task, the statement…
The ESA podcasts page has been revamped! Check out the new look for your favorite ESA podcasts on the new ESA podcasts page. Or, if you’re an ESA podcast newbie, here’s the rundown of the three series: Beyond the Frontier features interviews with the authors publishing in the ESA journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. The authors to discuss…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Mountaintop mining, the practice of using dynamite or bulldozers to blast off the tops of mountains in search of coal and dumping the rock remnants into valleys, will apparently receive tighter restrictions in an announcement the White House is scheduled to make today. But the practice, which destroys both the mountaintop ecosystems it blasts away and many stream ecosystems buried…
In 2001, the National Fire Plan was enacted by Congress, providing funding and support for local and regional governments to prepare for and mitigate wildfires. Now, a study led by Tania Schoennagel of the University of Colorado has attempted to assess the major results of the NFP in the Western United States around urban areas. Surprisingly, her results show that…