Science on Saturday

Today is, of course, Earth Hour, so I do hope you plan to participate and turn off those lights for an hour beginning at 8:30. Over 300 U.S cities, including Salt Lake, are pledged to participate, four states have now signed on (Arkansas, California, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania), plus buildings and landmarks across the country (Empire State Building, National Cathedral, Sears, Salt Lake Temple, Gateway Arch, the Golden Gate Bridge, and many more). Though there is nothing formal planned, here at the park we have an astronomy night planned and the topic of the preceding program will be on climate change. I'll be at home listening to an audio book by candlelight, just as I did last year.

If you're in a bigger city that is participating and the lights go down in your neighborhood you should check and see if maybe you can't see a few more stars out. Of course, part of the motivation behind Earth Hour is to raise awareness on the issue of Global Climate Change, a topic which, just this week, I found some additional news feeds that deal with this very topic. We can use that information to contribute to our discussions on matters of science and today is a good day to get started. A couple of these news items on climate change are from several weeks ago, but still pertinent and just may be "news" to you. In "celebration" I've also added a new widget near the bottom of the far right column that will show an interesting climate related fact every time you visit (or refresh the page).

The first is about a report from Audubon released back in February summarizing some of the data from Christmas Bird Counts over the past 40 years. The data shows a rather dramatic shift with some 305 species wintering farther to the north an average of 35 miles/56 km. At over 300 mi/500 km, Red-breasted Mergansers and Purple Finches have moved the most. In the case of the merganser, of course, they can't remain farther north if there isn't open water . . .

Butcher and his colleagues drew on data from the Christmas Bird Counts, a 109-year-old tradition in which birders brave whatever winter throws at them to visit predetermined sites where they record all the species they can find during a 24-hour period. In recent years, more than 50,000 volunteers have turned out for the count at some 2,000 locations across the continent. Such citizen science efforts offer a way to grasp broad trends, says conservation biologist Stuart Butchart of BirdLife International, headquartered in Cambridge, England. "The strength of this study is that it's looking at a broad range of species across a large geographic area," he says. "It's the overall pattern that's important and should be raising alarm bells."

I mentioned Science News' regular feature Science for Kids in the first in this series of posts and they have one on eating a greener diet that may be of interest to adults, too (the "adult" version of this article is online, too). Of the different kinds of meat we consume, beef contributes - by far - more in the way of greenhouse gases that either chicken or pork. The cows themselves produce copious amounts of methane, one of the worst greenshouse gases, as they digest the food they eat. Ulf Sonesson of the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology in Goteborg, Sweden points out that a single half-pound burger contributes more that 19 times its weight in carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in the process of raising the animal, transporting it to be slaughtered, ground up for consumption, and shipped to you to eat. Chicken and pork production contribute less bad stuff to the atmosphere - in fact, a Canadian scientist is quoted in the article says that if we switched away from beef completely the amount of CO2 would be cut in half. As for me, the main meat in my diet has been chicken for many years, though would I probably be inclined to eat a little more pork but for the other environmental impacts associated with those factory farms, not that there aren't similar bad things with giant chicken farms, too. (I only buy two or three pounds of beef per month and it comes from the store in Panguitch that buys and butchers locally raised cattle.)