It’s a Sunday, and I haven’t been to church. I did pray, though, and I did invite God — the God, any God — to show me how to be of service today. That’s pretty much it for me, as far as a spiritual routine. But I have one; I do that much almost every morning.
Also, I believe in science — including its findings about climate change and evolution. And apparently, that statement, “I believe in God, and I believe in evolution,” puts me in a group of people that doesn’t get much air time in the mainstream media or the blogosphere. The atheists might say I’m no better than a fundamentalist Christian; a small step away from witchcraft in the world of woo-woo. The hardest-core Christians tell me I’m actually more like an atheist as far as they’re concerned, a non-believer. Too often, the middle doesn’t seem to be good enough for either camp.
Am I actually part of a silent majority? If so, I think it’s high time we speak out, because I think our society needs us.
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Adult orange clownfish Amphiprion percula form breeding pairs. Photo courtesy of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS.
The news about oceans was pretty grim last week, but there is hope. Most of the world’s fishing countries are reneging on their agreements to fish responsibly and sustainably. Despite harvest restrictions in the Delaware Bay, plummeting horseshoe crab populations are leaving their migratory bird predators high and dry. In a climate change scenario, the poorest fishing countries will be the hardest hit, and are likely to face “unprecedented hardship.”
And global warming could rob Nemo of his sense of smell.
Seriously.
But each of the findings spells out an opportunity to avert the worst.
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Artist's rendering of the Thirty Meter Telescope
Artist's rendering of the Giant Magellan Telescope, by Todd Mason
Two teams with United States participation are angling to build the next-generation telescope, which will peer at the very edges of the universe, into galaxies that were created immediately after the Big Bang.
And as a citizen of a country that’s learning how to tighten its belt, I’m going to suggest they get together and build just one.
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Photo by the Hubble Space Telescope, courtesy of NASA, the European Space Agency and Lawrence Livermore National Lab.
Produce from a Community Supported Agriculture program in Flagstaff, AZ
Buying locally is romantic. It feels good to support local economies, and reducing the carbon footprint of our food shopping habits is a noble goal.
But now, new research is adding a wrinkle. David Coley from the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom is lead author on a new study showing that, on average, lower carbon emissions result from delivering a vegetable box than making a trip to a local farm shop. The paper is out this week in the journal Food Policy.
I’m not sure how many people live where produce delivery is available — I don’t. But the study makes an interesting point.
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