Salon.com > Kirsten Weir

Global boiling

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:33:00 +0000

By now we all know what's in store for us if we continue on our emissions-happy path: increasingly hotter days, horrific droughts and floods, angrier storms, acidic ocean waters that will dissolve coral reefs, and a surging sea level that will swallow our coastal cities. Still, that scenario is a virtual sunny day by the pool compared to the cataclysmic climate picture being drawn by some scientists. Never mind carbon dioxide emissions. Let's talk about the vast stores of carbon hidden deep beneath our feet.

During the last year, geoscientists have held several workshops and conferences to discuss what is known -- and the great deal that isn't -- about the "deep carbon" cycle. Next week, at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, scientists plan to hold a special session devoted to one potentially frightening aspect of that cycle: a strange little substance known as methane hydrate.

Methane hydrates, or clathrates, are icelike gas deposits buried under permafrost and deep below the seafloor. Some researchers fear that the hydrates are on the verge of melting en masse and belching out a cloud of methane gas that will send global temperatures skyrocketing.

Dark night for bats

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:45:00 +0000

As dusk settles over the forest, the mosquitoes start swarming in force. Scott Darling, a biologist with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, unfurls a net across a wide path. Not five minutes later, the first bat of the night lands in the net with a sudden thwoomp. The tiny winged creature bares its pointy teeth and begins to chirp, the angry staccato squeaks ringing out like Morse code.

Darling uses the dull point of a pencil to gently pry the net away from the entangled bat. Later, he will examine the bat for signs of disease, weigh it (7 grams, slightly more than a pair of pennies), tag it and set it free. Then he'll discard his latex gloves, slather hand sanitizer on his skin and disinfect his equipment, even dousing the pencil he used to free the bat from the net. This last bit -- the latex gloves, the disinfectant -- is still a new practice, a cautionary protocol courtesy of white-nose syndrome (WNS), a mysterious new illness causing bats in the Northeast to waste away as they hibernate.

The cat whisperer

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:27:00 +0000

Once when my cat Thompson was a kitten, I called my sister. I was near tears. "I think I understand how shaken-baby syndrome happens," I said, my voice cracking. Luckily she talked me down from my agitated state before things got ugly.

Thompson has always been challenging. He spent his kittenhood with me in a tiny Greenwich Village studio. During that first year, he spent most nights sprinting laps around the apartment, punctuating each loop by pouncing on my face. After a few hours, usually right around the time I was easing into REM sleep, he'd jump to the top of the microwave and press the quick-start button with his little gray-and-white paw. I'd awaken to the soft whirring hum and glowing light emanating from the kitchenette; in my haze of sleep, I thought aliens had come.

Thompson grew into a wildly affectionate, completely lovable, moderately rotund adult cat. He outgrew most of his extreme behaviors, but one trait persisted. Thompson is a biter. He bites frequently and hard. As I climb into bed at night, he'll dart from a dark corner and lock his jaws around my ankle, ears back and eyes wide, like a lion taking down a wounded gazelle. But five minutes later, all is forgotten. He pads clumsily back to bed, tucks his head under my chin and stares up at me with an expression of pure, unwavering love. He purrs, so happy he drools, until we both fall asleep.

Rachel Carson’s birthday bashing

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 12:00:00 +0000

Rachel Carson has been shouldering a lot of blows lately, especially for a woman who has been dead more than 40 years. Last month marked the 100th birthday of the woman whose 1962 book, "Silent Spring," is credited with launching the modern environmental movement. While environmentalists paused to celebrate Carson's legacy, those politically opposed to environmental regulation took the opportunity to engage in some birthday-bashing. They blame Carson and her successors for millions of deaths by malaria -- deaths, they say, that could have been prevented if she hadn't scared the world away from the potent pesticide DDT.

Foremost among the finger-pointers is Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who blocked bills to honor Carson and name a Pennsylvania post office for her. Coburn's Web site links visitors to Rachel Was Wrong, a site hosted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (a free-market think tank known for, among other things, disputing evidence that human activity is driving climate change). Beside a grim photo gallery of malaria victims, the site claims "millions of people around the world suffer the painful and often deadly effects of malaria because one person sounded a false alarm. That person is Rachel Carson."

The truth about cat and dog food

Thu, 24 May 2007 11:01:00 +0000

Dick Van Patten eats dog food. At least, that's what the former "Eight Is Enough" actor will have you believe in publicity stunts for Dick Van Patten's Natural Balance Pet Foods, the company to which he hitched his falling star back in 1989. A tour of the company's Web site features photos of Van Patten, smiling stiffly alongside such celebrity notables as former 'N Sync singer Lance Bass and ex-"Baywatch" actress Traci Bingham, dipping their spoons into colorful cans of Natural Balance Eatables for Dogs!

Call me crazy but it's going to take a lot more than an endorsement from Hollywood's B-list to convince me to dig into a can of dog chow, and I suspect I'm not alone in that sentiment. In fact, given recent events, more than a few pet owners are wondering whether we should even be feeding pet food to our pets.

The mass media has certainly been on a pet food diet in the past few months, thanks to the reporting frenzy surrounding Menu Foods' recall, beginning in March, of more than 100 brands of pet food. The tainted products, which allegedly killed or sickened thousands of dogs and cats, ranged from cheap Wal-Mart store brand Ol' Roy to high-end labels such as Iams and Eukanuba.

What’s the matter with cloning Rex?

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 16:46:00 +0000

Shadow Anne is a dog adored. "She is smart, very independent, graceful, beautiful and elegant," says her owner, Marianne Schlegelmilch. "She likes to stand on the second-story beam of our house, gazing over her kingdom, with her long ears blowing in the wind -- sort of like Kate Winslet in 'Titanic.' She is a diva."

Shadow Anne is an Afghan hound, an aristocratic breed designed to be thin, hairy and refined. Afghans may lag behind labs and retrievers in popularity, but they recently secured a spot in history as the first canine to be cloned. In August, South Korean scientist Woo Suk Hwang and his colleagues announced they'd successfully produced an Afghan hound clone, dubbed "Snuppy" for "Seoul National University puppy." The cloning milestone grabbed the public's attention. This wasn't just another Dolly the sheep. This was man's best friend.

"It would be really hard to replicate the life experiences that made Shadow who she is today," says Schlegelmilch, of Homer, Alaska. "Still, if I could clone her when she reaches old age, I might be tempted."