Walden Pond and Climate Change

Harvard researchers have published a paper on the effect of climate change on the Walden Pond area.  Important to understand is how climate change can enable and strengthen the hand of invasive species. Interestingly, data from Thoreau's own journals were useful in this research.  Relevant snippet from the summary:

"Climate change may exacerbate species invasions across communities if non-native species are better able to respond to climate changes than native species."

Here is the link thread to the paper.

http://news.discovery.com/earth/how-climate-is-changing-walden-pond.html

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/02/when-success-spells-defeat/

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0008878

We often walk in these woods so its fun to find information that helps us understand and appreciate our local area in more detail.

supplements

Here is a great post and graphic from Information is Beautiful - http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/snake-oil-supplements/  that describes the posible value of various supplements.  The cool thing is that the graphic is driven real-time off their updated data, so when new information comes in - the graphic is automagically updated.

I believe, to a certain extent, in the benefit of supplements.  These days I take, from time to time, a multi-vitamin, fish oil, folic acid, SAM-E, l-lysine, and vitamin D. 

winter wonderland

After the storm.

And, from last month.

climate science accuracy, advocacy

This article in the Washington Post captures some of my feelings about the issues raised by (in my opinion) carelessness in how climate science results have been communicated, or not.

See: "Series of missteps.... "

One of the fantastic qualities of the scientific method is focus on reproducibility of results; share your data, analysis, and conclusions, and others can verify or not your results.   Opinion and advocacy is welcome; both are separate from the scientific process.  Rely on science for scientific results; engage the political sphere to determine policy.