Archive for February 2011
Are you hot, as in, feeling warm? Then according to research out of the University of Chicago and University of California Berkley you may be more likely to believe in global warming.
The study, published last month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that if people feel warmer, like sitting in a hot room, they’re more likely to believe in the climactic change.
They found this out by placing people answering the questionnaires in cubicles, some of which were overheated.
The researchers say that people placed in the hot cubicles …
The name of the new invader is enough to make people laugh, but its potential peril is serious enough to make fruit growers weep.
The brown marmorated stink bug, which is notorious for wiping out horticultural crops, has been discovered in Southwest and central Michigan.
In 2010, growers in Pennsylvania lost an estimated 40 to 50 percent of their peach crop to the stink bug, according to Penn State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences.
By Alice Rossignol and Rachael Gleason
Let’s get ready to rumbleeeee!
Last year we introduced the Great Lakes SmackDown!, an interactive feature that pitted eight aquatic invasive species against each other in science-based “lake fights” to determine the region’s most destructive invader. Experts and readers weighed in on which species they thought was the worst for the lakes. In the end, the quagga mussel prevailed with a nasty filter-feeding addiction and a problem with hoarding toxins.
But this time around we’re going terrestrial: birds, mammals, insects and all sorts of plants. And …
A proposal to bring wireless Internet service to state parks to boost tourism appears far from certain.
Broadband service could promote agri-tourism to golf courses, fishing docks and state parks.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had an interesting take last week on a Feb. 3 report out of the International Upper Great Lakes Study board.
The news story questioned whether the report provided an unbiased view, and quoted one person confused over whether the information represented a “straight-up” news piece. You can read reporter Dan Egan’s take here.
Echo reporter Jeff Gillies, who had referenced the IJC report in a post the day before, disagreed with that assessment. You can read his take on the Journal Sentinel story in Echo’s staff blog, the …
A plan from House Republicans to cut $100 billion from the 2011 federal budget would leave the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative at $225 million.
In the second segment of a three-part video series on Great Lakes dead zones, Heidelberg University senior research scientist Pete Richards discusses recent research on the role of dissolved phosphorous and why it may be causing new problems. Richards focuses on Lake Erie, which has a long history of high algal growth and low oxygen.
Part I of the series is here.
Part III is here.
Richards and Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute director Don Scavia recently hosted a workshop on new clues about why the rates of agricultural nutrients are on the rise …
You may find out more than you want to about environmental activities in your area in the EPA Enviromapper.
This EPA map shows almost anything you want (or may not want) to know: from hazardous waste sites to the locations chemicals in use like ammonia.
