As the 2006 Sea Grant Fellow for Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), I spent much of the year working hard to keep oil drilling away from the state’s coast. I am completely devastated to see photos of the Panhandle taken this morning by The Ocean Conservany.

The full set is here, but be warned, these images are hard to see…

As we continue to talk about energy, we’ll be exploring its relationship with the food we eat. Food and energy are inextricably linked, but all too often, their connections are overlooked. But before we begin considering average daily per capita intake for humans and how that relates to production and availability, it’s necessary to consider that an adequate amount of food is a vastly different topic from nutrition.

The US National Research Council has set Recommended Daily Allowances for what we consume, which includes vitamins, minerals, and trace elements. In affluent countries like ours, it’s relatively easy to obtain what we need, but micronutrient deficiencies occur at very high numbers globally. Micronutrients are necessary to make hormones, enzymes, and ensure proper growth and development. So deficiencies can lead to mental impairment, blindness, compromised immunity, infant mortality, hearing loss, and more. Billions around the world are now at risk. In Feeding the World, Vaclav Smil writes “the eradication of micronutrient deficiencies could exceed the impact of the global elimination of smallpox.”

How to get there–or at least, move in that direction? We can either provide the necessary foods to those who do not currently have regular access to them and/or make supplements readily available. The good news is that many scientists  and others have been working hard to achieve this. But we have a long way to go.

So as we press on exploring these topics, keep in mind that quantity alone is not enough when considering world food production.

Just kidding with the title.

I don’t have anything particularly insightful to say about the physics of the game.

Rather, this post is just to say, I’m off to watch the USA (and England).

I won’t be blogging this am at least until that is over and done with.

But I’m sure people have opinions about the team, so this is a place to leave them, and discuss the game….

No, I’m not just talking about the economy. The Pew Organization and Smithsonian teamed up to poll us about where we think technology will take us, and I’m struck by the results:

Large majorities expect that computers will be able to carry on conversations (81% say this definitely or probably will happen) and that there will be a cure for cancer (71%). About two-thirds (66%) say that artificial arms and legs will outperform real limbs while 53% envision ordinary people traveling in space.

At the same time, most say that war, terrorism and environmental catastrophes are at least probable by the year 2050. Nearly six-in-ten (58%) see another world war as definite or probable; 53% say the same about the prospect for a major terrorist attack on the United States involving nuclear weapons. An even higher percentage (72%) anticipates that the world will face a major energy crisis in the next 40 years.

The public is evenly divided over whether the quality of the earth’s environment will improve over the next 40 years; as many say the environment is not likely to improve (50%) as say it is (47%). There continues to be a widespread belief that the earth will get warmer in the future, though the percentage expressing this view has declined by 10 points, from 76% to 66%, since 1999.

Moreover, 60% say the world’s oceans will be less healthy 40 years from now than they are today; just 32% say the oceans will be more healthy.

What do you think of these findings? I can tell you the prediction I’m most confident in–that the world will be warmer.

Courtesy of Rick Piltz, I learn of a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that powerfully demonstrates just how convinced scientists are that global warming is real and human caused. Indeed, this paper, entitled “Expert Credibility in Climate Change,” looks at the relationship between scientific prominence, amount of work published in the field, and acceptance of the scientific consensus. Findings:

(i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and

(ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.

Those of us who follow this issue closely won’t be surprised–but the results mean that journalists who have given a lot of weight to climate “skeptics” have some ‘splaining to do. Essentially, this paper seems to be suggesting that they got the wrong “experts.”

Incidentally, given how closely this study hits home, I would expect it to be attacked–just as Naomi Oreskes’ famous paper “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” was.

Recently, I did a long post describing the substance of the Templeton Cambridge fellowship, and why it is valuable. Fortunately, that’s not a tough argument to make. The fact is, journalism (and dialogue) about science and religion are pretty difficult to oppose.

Case in point: Last week, here in D.C. (my old, new home), I attended an event at the American Association for the Advancement of Science to reintroduce its Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER), which now has a new infusion of energy and a new director, Dr. Jennifer Wiseman, formerly of NASA and an astrophysicist with a special expertise in the study of exoplanets.

Yes, that’s right: America’s leading scientific society has created a program to foster more dialogue between science and religion–and of course, considers that to be a very good thing. (more…)

Having just adopted Happy from Austin Pets Alive!, I’m delighted to feature a shelter in this week’s edition of the Science of Kissing Gallery. Paige Miller with Salt Lake County Animal Services submitted her photo of a volunteer socializing Teddy–a gorgeous pitt bull looking for his forever home.

Of course, dogs make a notable appearance in The Science of Kissing and to those considering a new best friend, I highly recommend adopting from your local shelter!

Submit your original photo or artwork for consideration in the gallery here.

Jon Stewart takes a look back at the intentions of our past eight presidents:

The latest episode of Point of Inquiry just went up, with Bill McKibben, the author most recently of Eaarth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet, a truly intense read (as I say on the show). You can download it here, and stream it here. Here’s the show’s description:

Global warming, we’re often told, is an issue we must address for the sake of our grandchildren. We need to cut carbon because of our moral obligation to future generations.

But according to Bill McKibben, that’s a 1980s view. As McKibben writes in his new book Eaarth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet, the increasingly open secret is that global warming happened already. We’ve passed the threshold, and the planet isn’t at all the same. It’s less climatically stable. Its weather is haywire. It has less ice, more drought, higher seas, heavier storms. It even appears different from space.

And that’s just the beginning of the earth-shattering changes in store—a small sampling of what it’s like to trade a familiar planet (Earth) for one that’s new and strange (Eaarth). We’ll survive on this sci-fi world, this terra incognita—but we may not like it very much. And we may have to change some fundamental habits along the way.

Eaarth, argues McKibben, is our greatest failure.

Once again, you can download the show here, and stream it here. And you can buy Bill McKibben’s Eaarth here, if you haven’t already…