Erik Ness’s Posts

• Dirty Minds

  Erik Ness reviews Silent Scourge: Children, Pollution, and Why Scientists Disagree by Colleen Moore 0

  Posted 5 years, 11 months ago

  Attention, parents: Now that you've seen your kids' first report cards of the year, it's time for a little homework of your own. No doubt you're doing the best you can to ensure your little ones' eventual membership in Mensa -- promoting stimulating dinner conversation, reading a chapter together each night, maybe even playing Mozart during bath time. But wait -- there's more. You'll find your next assignment in the pages of Colleen Moore's Silent Scourge: Children, Pollution, and Why Scientists Disagree.

• Sturgeon General Warning

  Wisconsin anglers band together to protect an elusive fish 0

  Posted 6 years, 5 months ago

  Every winter, on the outskirts of Appleton, Wis., the world's strangest subdivision suddenly appears. Thousands of shacks, each about the size of a two-hole outhouse, proliferate on the frozen expanse of Lake Winnebago.

  

  Dick Koerner in his shack
  on Lake Winnebago.

  Photo: Erik Ness.

  Early in the morning on Feb. 8, Dick Koerner jockeyed his pickup along the frozen track to his weather-beaten shelter. He unloaded his truck and unlocked the shack. The windowless, flat-black interior accentuated the glorious green light flowing from a rectangular hole cut in the ice.… Read More

• Dutch Treat

  The Netherlands tackles nitrogen pollution with a game 0

  Posted 7 years, 6 months ago

  Confess: You've played more than one hand of solitaire on company time. Tetris anyone? Maybe you've even been a MYSTic or a QUAKEr.

  

  If you happen to work for the Dutch Ministry of the Environment, playing computer games is now part of your job description. Or at least playing a computer game -- the world's only computer game designed to solve the problem of nitrogen pollution. The Netherlands is home to intense agriculture and industry, and is, not coincidentally, one of the world's hot spots for nitrogen pollution.

  Nitrogen is a confusing bad guy… Read More

• Spin the Bottle

  Perrier didn't reckon on an angry citizenry when it looked to expand into the Midwest 0

  Posted 8 years, 5 months ago

  Escape to Wisconsin. Play in our lakes, fish our rivers, and cavort in the famously kitschy water parks of Wisconsin Dells. Just don't try to take a drop of it home with you.

  

  Ninety-nine bottles of water on the wall.

  This, at least, is the stern message being sent by thousands of Wisconsin citizens to Perrier, the world's largest bottler of designer water. For the last few years Perrier has been a-dowsin', seeking a Midwestern source for its Ice Mountain label, currently bottled in far-flung Allentown, Penn.

  You might think spring water… Read More

• You Light Up My Life. Now Stop It!

  What's wrong with those pretty holiday bulbs? Plenty 0

  Posted 8 years, 11 months ago

  Pssst ... want to know why the climate conference sputtered at The Hague? Published reports cited disagreements about trees. Well, the trees in question might well have been of the Christmas variety -- because, of course, the U.S. delegation needed to return home in time to string up the traditional holiday lights. You heard it here first.

  

  Lite brite, in Seattle.

  Photo: Nathan James.

  Among the surfeit of unpleasant consumer forces unleashed by The Holidays -- from motorized Caddyshack gophers to commercials with more intelligence than the toys they flak, from… Read More

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