Well Darn!!!

A few months ago I wrote a quick piece about a potentially venomous dinosaur. I said I would read the paper but didn't get access to it till I was too busy to get around to it. Anyway I wanted it to be true but a new paper (Gianechini et al., 2010) seems to show that Sinornithosaurus probably was not in fact venomous. The authors did have a chance to respond (Gong et al., 2010) but it is questionable on if they have met their burden of proof. Now I haven't read the papers and the way things are going with the papers I need to read I won't reach that want to pile until much later. Anyway Brian Switek over at Dinosaur Tracking has a pretty good write up on both papers and I am sure he has read them so go read his review.

Gianechini, F., Agnolín, F., & Ezcurra, M. (2010). A reassessment of the purported venom delivery system of the bird-like raptor Sinornithosaurus Paläontologische Zeitschrift DOI: 10.1007/s12542-010-0074-9

Gong, E., Martin, L., Burnham, D., & Falk, A. (2010). Evidence for a venomous Sinornithosaurus Paläontologische Zeitschrift DOI: 10.1007/s12542-010-0076-7

But it's cold...

So I have blogged about greenman3610 before (see here, and here) and I know I seem to really push every video he does, it couldn't be because he addresses concerns that anger me in a very eloquent way could it. In his latest video he addresses the common misconception that just because it is really cold outside right now that must mean that global climate change is wrong:



So while we are on the subject PZ Myers blogged about this a couple of days ago (and of course I can't seem to find his post exactly to link here) and I thought it was very interesting. PZ pointed out that the person writing this article is in fact a restaurant critic, so enjoy this article as well.

EDIT: So this is why I couldn't find the article on PZ's blog I actually found it on Rationalwiki's what's going on in the blogosphere section, by bad!

Venomous Dinosaur?

Apparently at least according to the authors of a paper that is about to come out. Based upon this blog post (here) it is hard to tell exactly they have some evidence but nothing certain. I obviously haven't read the paper yet so I can't really say for sure till I do that.

It could always be worse:

Why we must tread carefully with climate refrom

So I just finished up my work for the semester and made it home yesterday so I might have some free time over the next few weeks to put some posts together, assuming I can come up with some topics.

This week wrapped up the Copenhagen climate conference in which only very little was accomplished. But I don't really want to discuss what happened there to be honest you will never get most of the developing countries to support something like that until you make it cheaper than just dumping the trash in the ocean, so to speak, and for this reason I think the US needs to take the lead in this attempt to clean up our actions. We have done this before when polluting of water was a major problem and now most countries realize it is wrong it just isn't something they can easily change. We need to set the example!

But, you might be saying that is not what you have as your title to this post. You would be correct and that is because of the economic problems we will face with a sudden drastic change in the way we produce power/drive/etc. The US transport and power industry is currently based on oil/gas and coal if we all of a sudden said no you can't use those any more because it is destroying the world well we will destroy our economy in the process it is currently too expensive to buy the alternative energy sources. I often think that many scientist forget about this cost and that is really too bad but I think most humans tend not to care as much about those who aren't us, so I don't think it is just a scientist thing but I know we do it and think that it should be easy to change things.

So what do I suggest we do, since it is one thing to say something is wrong but we should always be able to provide solutions to the problems we point out? Well we should start by funding alternative energy solutions. The current government subsidies go almost exclusively to oil/gas and coal. Why not scale back a little on that funding, thereby increasing cost and making it less desirable to the average person, and send that change towards alternative options. The strides that have been made in solar and tidal etc have been slowed by lack of money but yet they have occurred.

But the government shouldn't be the only one we as consumer's should demand cleaner resources etc. Vote with your wallet, drive less and walk more, turn off lights when you leave a room, (in honor of the massive snow storm on the east coast) shovel your own snow you don't need a snow blower, all of those things that we have been preached at to do we should. Yes it won't always be easy but it can be done but I do realize that you can never please everyone:

Interesting way to handle this

So I was just cruising the internets tonight and came across the Wikipedia article on the Virginia Aquarium and having been to this aquarium before, given it was years ago, I figured I would cruise over to their website (found here). When I got to their website I see that they are going to open a new exhibit in about 56 days. So I decided I would check what all exhibits they currently have there, you have your standard sharks, seals, and turtles (among others) then I went to the new exhibit, found here, where I read this:

The Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center will unveil its spectacular $25 million renovation in 2009. Restless Planet is four immersive habitats, dozens of new exhibits and 110,000 gallons of new aquariums. The Aquarium’s original main exhibit gallery has been dramatically overhauled to represent Restless Planet, where we can see how diverse environments from Virginia’s past compare to similar environments still in existence today

Awesome I thought but they aren't really going to reference geologic time periods are they?

The Malaysian Peat Swamp, resembling Virginia during the Carboniferous period

Yes they are this is awesome and should be an interesting way to help kids see how the Earth and in particular Virginia have changed environments throughout the millions of years of earth's history.

They will have the Malaysian Peat Swamp (representing the Carboniferous), the Coastal Sahara Desert Habitat (representing the Silurian), the Red Sea Habitat (representing the rifts valleys of VA during the "Jurassic" I might lean toward Triassic since they are called the Triassic rift basins [sorry]), and the Indonesia’s Flores Island Habitat (representing the volcanic Precambrian [this might be a stretch but OK]).

Overall I hope that these end up being a good exhibit when it opens if there is anyone reading this who can get there when it opens let me know what it is like, hopefully I can get out there in the next few years but I doubt it.

Earth Science Video

So this video was made by The American Geological Society (AGI), website here. Anyway someone posted it on YouTube so I figured I would pass it along.