Notes For today

• The conservation value of airports. The reality is that the airport in the study is a 'high conservation area' just because the surrounding areas (New York) are so awful for everything that nothing survives. Even in the managed open areas surrounding the airport, the big benefactor of the 'conservation' area are insects. A group that is pretty adaptable and usually unwelcome.
• So they've built a better tomato. Kinda. The overwhelming frustration I have with genetically engineered food is not that it is GM. Rather, it is that it isn't being engineered for taste. I mean, look at the evidence they provide that the food is better: Pictures. Pictures don't taste good. I'm not sure how we can improve the taste, but it sure doesn't seem like anyone is even trying.
• Another reason to avoid shellfish: Apparently they cause amnesia.
• An interesting list of emerging conservation issues.
• Even among otherwise intelligent people, there seems to be core resistance to the idea that humans are actually causing climate change. People like to bring up all kinds of things (water vapor, the fact that CO2 is at very low abundance in the atmosphere, the temperature adjustments made to account for urbanization). I think this is happening because people don't want to believe that humans are messing everything up. Every piece of evidence demonstrating climate change is occurring ends up being undermined or ignored. Now that the evidence is becoming overwhelming, the response has been that this climate change is driven by 'natural' processes. Of course, there are still those who just want to believe the whole thing is a liberal conspiracy to mess with their sex lives.