Trust Suzuki to get it right

I hadn't read any David Suzuki for a while, and I'd forgotten just how brilliantly he cuts to the core of things.

"We are the earth, and whatever we do to it we do to ourselves."

It's from a speech Suzuki gave at at the 2008 Commonwealth Lecture in London. I thank Online Opinion for drawing my attention to it, but for some reason they decided to chop it up - it's much better in full here.

Of course if I argue for a full reading rather than a misleading excerpt, that should apply to the above quote too. Screw it. The quote illustrates one of many points he makes during the talk: we cannot separate ourselves from the environment. This is the fundamental perspective shift Suzuki argues humans (at least those that wear suits) still need to make before we can think properly about how to solve the environmental problems that so beset us.

Zoo apes egged on by treats

THEY'RE used to eating plants and small animals, but these apes weren't about to give up a special present yesterday.

Siamang apes Puteri and baby Chanee were among scores of animals at Taronga Western Plains Zoo which received Easter treats.

The playful primates received their Easter goodies inside a $6,000 Louis Vuitton bag.

Renualdo Obierto, a spokesperson for Louis Vuitton, said the gift represented the company’s deep and abiding respect for our evolutionary cousins.

“At Louis Vuitton we’re all about luxury fashion and leather goods. These monkeys have given us so much, it’s time we gave something back.

The bags were filled with carob eggs and handheld power tools, much to Puteri and Chanee’s delight.

Zookeeper Brad Higgins said that it had been a tough year at the zoo, so they wanted to give Puteri and Chanee a break from their normal diet of plants and wildlife such as insects and small birds.

“After the debacle last year when they refused to eat chocolate eggs, we thought we’d try carob – the all natural chocolate substitute.

Siamang apes, originally from southeast Asia, are large, dark gibbon apes and are considered harmless by the Australian Defence Force.

They have dense, shaggy hair over most of their bodies and have senses surprisingly similar to humans including touch and taste.

Taronga Western Plains Zoo, which leads the world with its 1:1 zookeeper to animal ratio, is located at Dubbo, in central west NSW.

Story and photo Daily Telegraph, with an Artful Science Twist

Your life, reduced to kilos of carbon dioxide

Every cremation creates around 160 kg (353 pounds) of carbon dioxide, compared to 39 kg of carbon dioxide for each burial.

From a story about an Adelaide crematorium claiming to offer zero carbon funerals.

It's a good thing that we now count the carbon dioxide emissions of a wide range of activities. Much is still unknown, and we need to calculate other environmental and social effects, not just emissions. But this is a great first step in purposefully creating a society where we know what's going on and choose activities based on their total impacts.

HARD DRUGS IN OUR DRINKING WATER

As usual, humans have been incredibly industrious in producing an assortment of society-saving goods (SSGs). Also as usual we are just now looking back over our shoulder and wondering whether the environment really does have a limitless capacity to absorb the byproducts of all these SSGs after all.

In this case the SSGs are pharmaceuticals. We are excreting them en masse into our toilets, and from there it’s but a plop, skim and pump to our sewage treatment plants, our waterways, our dams and our taps – and don't forget our bottled water. Hang on, our waterways? Who says their ours? Our propensity for property may actually spur us onto doing something in this case, as opposed to if it was just some remote wilderness that we didn’t claim or directly rely on.

This issue has been growing for a while, although it’s anyone’s guess as to whether it will turn out to be a big deal. The establishment says no big deal. Their argument is essentially “the solution to pollution is dilution.” Others say we should be worried – we’re talking massive and increasing quantities (albeit at very low concentrations - think pico, femto and attomolar) of drugs designed to act on humans, that could build up in our bodies over decades. There’s been very little research done as far as I know.

Yes, we need to investigate and no, I’ve no idea where this issue stands in relation to a bunch of other very pressing environmental problems. AP did some research, in their own journalistic ways (btw, halle-friggin-lujah, has anyone else noticed that real investigative journalism is dying a big fat death?) and the article that came out of it did a decent job. It gives a nice overview of some of the issues, with a sprinkling of scary quotes thrown in.

World's Oldest Bat Discovered Under Fat Man

Here's one from the archives, that now assumes its rightful location at ArtfulScience. In fact, there's a stack of other archived material that really belongs at this blog, but the transportation costs are considerable, not to mention greenhouse gas emissions. So check em out please. On to the story...

World's Oldest Bat Discovered Under Fat Man
The oldest bat in the world was discovered on a couch previously occupied by a morbidly obese man. The bloodsuckler was a Townsend's Big Eared bat (Corynorhinus townsendii) and biological testing confirmed its age as 37, beating by seven the previous record held by a little brown bat.

The man involved was identified as Barry Templeton, a 62 year old man from a village near Bristol, England. Templeton, who weighs 132 kg, explained that he would not have noticed a thing, but his dog, Marmaduchess alerted him to the unlikely visitor's presence after he had gotten up to answer the door. Templeton took the bat to his local vet, who pronounced the bat dead on arrival. Templeton said he had "no idea" how the bat got there.

Although a battery of tests were used to establish the deceased bat's age, the clincher was DNA testing of blood which had dried around its lips. This was amazingly traced back to a male pig-tailed monkey (Macaca nemestrina) known as Bonnie, who died of heart failure whilst in orbit around the earth aboard the NASA spacecraft, Biosatellite III. The monkey passed away 9 days after being launched in June, 1969.Templeton, an amateur astronomer, casually mentioned the story to a friend working at NASA, who recounted the tale of Bonnie.

NASA regularly takes blood samples of humans and animals it sends into space for identification purposes. Although it usually keeps these records confidential, NASA had no problem releasing the data to the Bristol veterinarian.A NASA official was unable to confirm whether Bonnie had been bitten by a bat, but suggested that a trip to the zoo a few days before launch by members of the Biosatellite III team, including Bonnie, would have been the only time the monkey would have been exposed to bats.