As ocean stocks dwindle, humanity turns increasingly to farmed fish. But does this actually make matters worse? Graphic artist Nigel Upchurch thinks so: [Video link] It matters which farmed fish you're eating, as some species consume more than others. Salmon is the worst, as this table, from a paper by Albert G.J. Tacon and Marc Metian of the University of Hawaii, demonstrates: The red arcs represent wild fish inputs, the yellow arcs farmed fish output. The numbers inside the circles show the ratio between the two. Numbers greater than one mean more wild fish is consumed than farmed fish produced. Upchurch provides...

28 May, 2011

As the 2011 flood season ramped up across the US and Canada, TheAtlantic.com's tech blogger, Alexis Madrigal. found himself wondering how the Mississippi River system works. So he produced an explainer that lays out the complex combination of natural and human forces that create, and attempt to control, the inevitable natural process of river flooding. What is the Mississippi River? It's not actually a silly question. The Mississippi no longer fits the definition a river as "a natural watercourse flowing towards an ocean, a lake, a sea, or another river." Rather, the waterway has been shaped in many ways, big and...

22 May, 2011

Contrarian has previously voiced astonishment that environmentalists — more accurately crackpots posing as environmentalists — would oppose a recycling project that transforms harmful municipal waste into a valuable organic fertilizer here and here. We're also chagrinned the Halifax media's gullibility and lack of interest in actual scientific information about the topic. Now, a North End resident has voiced similar incredulity in a letter to District 11 councillor Jerry Blumenthal: Dear Mr. Blumenthal, For a long time, I couldn't understand why Haligonians keep comparing their city to tiny Moncton, but now I'm beginning to get it. And I'm not referring to Moncton's apparently...

22 May, 2011

Los Angeles filmmaker and photographer Ransom Riggs made this short film about his favorite post-apocalyptic landscape, the Salton Sea. It's quite a story. H/T: Silas...

17 May, 2011

The University of Hawaii's International Pacific Research Center has created an animated simulation of the predicted debris path from the March 11 tsunami in Japan. The image below is a screenshot. Click here for the animation. H/T: Maptd mapping blog...

08 April, 2011

A dystopic environmental fable in 10 minutes written and directed by Chris Perry, and produced as part of the collaborative animation program at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. If the animation does't appear, please click here. Original score composed and adapted for guitar by Evan Viera, and performed by Nathaniel Brookman....

23 March, 2011

The New York Times has posted eight interactive satellite images of tsunami-ravaged cities in Japan. By moving the blue slider in the center of the image left and right, you can transition back and forth between the before and after images. (You can't do that on the screenshot shown here, only by going to the NYT site.) H/T: Richard Stephenson...

14 March, 2011

Contrarian is not the Nova Scotia blog of record, but I don't want HRM Council's latest act of craven irresponsibility to pass uncommented upon. Neither does Contrarian reader Lindsay Brown, who writes: What is it about the Halifax lifestyle that produces more embarrassing stuff in just two weeks than you can put in a single opaque garbage bag? What am I missing? The facts are simple. Nova Scotia was a pioneer in trash sorting, diversion, and recycling, thanks to visionary provincial legislation. These measures were necessary to slow the pace of landfill growth,  given the horrendous obstacles to siting new...

13 March, 2011

When Henry Shukman, a writer for Outsideonline.com, visited the 30 km exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, here’s what he found: The wild boar is standing 30 or 40 yards away, at the bottom of a grassy bank, staring right at me. Even from this distance I can see its outrageously long snout, its giant pointed ears, and the spiny bristles along its back. It looks part porcupine, a number of shades of ocher and gray. And it's far bigger than I expected, maybe chest-high to a man. The boar is like some minor forest god straight from...

11 March, 2011
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