Backyard Evolution

The first years of living in a new home are filled with surprises. Our new home in the burbs (I had to go, the family went first!) has a large wooden deck in the backyard. Large wooden decks are fun for outdoor dining, entertaining, repairs, power washing, staining, sealing, AND carpenter bees. The bees are big and sound like low flying helicopters.

Carpenter bees bore into the wood, create tunnels where they make more carpenter bees and then more tunnels and more bees, you get my drift? Carpenter bees are the size of golf balls and very aggressive in posture (although none of us has been stung by one yet).  The bees buzz at you about a foot or less away and follow you as you flee until some as yet undetermined distance is traveled away from where they first confronted you.

Needless to say, the kids are afraid of the bees and won’t play in the backyard. I sprayed the bees with water from my high powered nozzle on my hose. Unlike honeybees which die from too much exposure to water, carpenter bees drink the stuff up and zip by the spray to let you know they are still around.

Next, I put out lots more birdseed to draw more birds to my deck area. I hoped birds were natural predators of the bees and would decimate their population. I looked up what might eat a carpenter bee and seeded the deck according to the directions on the back …

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Bill Nye on global warming: “You can change the world!”

Mechanical engineer and kids-show host Bill Nye the Science Guy spoke to about 1,500 Columbus-area students this Monday. I attended his talk, and found that the peppy, brilliant man who preached the fun of science during my childhood had come bearing a hopeful message of the earth’s future.

Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth has helped to make climate change an enormous hot-button issue, and as the “future owners of the planet”, we college students hear about it a lot. Five separate school organizations have hosted five separate on-campus showings of An Inconvenient Truth in the past three months. The intent to inform and warn has gotten a little out of control.

With the media coverage of climate change in addition to this campus onslaught, most students get it. The close-minded may stick to their guns, but those moveable students understand. Yes, climate change occurs, yes, it will have grave consequences, yes, something desperately needs to change. Now what? The constant reiteration of Gore’s warning leaves all too many jaded and bored with the message.

Bill Nye, in his classically playful-yet-educational way, reframed the issues at the heart of global warming. He dispensed no Gore-like nay saying, he made no threats of the doom to come. Instead, he said this:

“People talk about how we have to ‘Save Planet Earth!’ But the Earth will be fine. The cockroaches will keep living; life on the planet will go on. It’s the humans I worry about.”

So, no forthcoming apocalypse after …

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What do professional skeptics say about global warming?

I listen extra closely whenever an organization dedicated to skeptical inquiry investigates a claim that is characterized as bogus by a loud minority.  A new detailed report on global warming was published in the May/June issue of Skeptical Inquirer Magazine.   Here's the primary conclusion: This paper will offer compelling evidence from…

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Want to turn your house green? Not if your homeowner association can help it.

According to Alternet, instead of applauding those new solar panels you just installed, your homeowner association might sue you: On April 14, in more than 1,400 locations from coast to coast, Americans rallied around the goal of reducing carbon emissions by 80 percent within the next four decades. On April…

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Eating Cakes That Can’t Be Kept

I sometimes shake my head at the futility of debating the dedicated faithful.  By that I do not mean those who are serious about their religion and think it through, but those who attached themselves, limpet-like, to a movement and then abandon all introspection and attack all dissent aimed at…

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