About Sarah Dowdey

Sarah Dowdey

Sarah Dowdey is the green science editor at HowStuffWorks.com. Although she briefly toyed with the idea of becoming a "scientist" in the vaguest terms as a kid, a love of literature drove her to study English and history at the University of Georgia. When she's not paging through a book or leafing through a magazine, she likes walking in her neighborhood's many parks and traveling when she gets the chance.

Most Recent: Sarah Dowdey Postings

Cinderella Species Find Their Glass Slipper in Domestication

by Sarah Dowdey

November 13, 2009
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I love old animated Disney movies, as well as the gruesome Brothers Grimm stories or Perrault fairy tales that most come from. One of the best has got to be “Cinderella,” with its talking mice and bad cat in the 1950 film and the grisly, on-the-fly foot surgery in the Grimm’s version.

So I was pleased to see the cachet of a nice fairy tale title extended to the world of agriculture. “Cinderella species,” like their namesake heroine, are diamonds in the rough, underappreciated beauties still hidden in the obscurity of the wild. More specifically, they’re the 3,000 species of wild fruit trees that grow in areas of west Africa, southern Africa and the Sahel, largely uncultivated.

But that’s been changing since the mid-1990s, when researchers at the World Agroforestry Centre surveyed residents on which indigenous trees they found most valuable. Instead of putting timber species at the top of the list, most people chose fruit trees as valued delicacies, staples or even famine food.

by Sarah Dowdey

November 6, 2009
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Thought the “Seven Seas” were static? Nope, they’ve gone through many incarnations since the ancient Greeks started grouping their local bodies of water into one convenient moniker. European explorers expanded the definition a bit to include a wider sampling of world waters, and today we’d probably list the Arctic, North and South Atlantic, North and South Pacific, Indian and Southern Oceans in the big seven — if we used the phrase at all.

But it turns out, there’s a new ocean in the making, rending the African continent right through the middle of Ethiopia.

by Sarah Dowdey

October 30, 2009
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One of my favorite tabloid headlines from the now-defunct Weekly World News was this: “Vegan Vampires Attack Trees.” I can just see it — a particularly menacing vegan vampire, perhaps draped in an organic cotton cloak (wool would be inappropriate, right?), lurching toward a helpless tree, preferably maple.

But I’m here to discuss something nonvegan and decidedly bloody: the vampire bat.

by Sarah Dowdey

October 20, 2009
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You probably don’t see many enormous plumed hats on the street anymore, but you will see them in Paris fashion shows (John Galliano used them liberally for spring 2010), or glued onto glitzy dresses meant to impress Bob Mackie on a reality show.

But if it were the turn of the 20th century, chances are, you’d see them everywhere.

by Sarah Dowdey

October 16, 2009
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I usually treat biomass fuel with a bit of levity. In fact, let’s be honest: I’ve only written about it when it’s centered on cow poop, leaving out all the groundbreaking, somewhat boring stories of other organic matter like wood pulp or alcohol fumes.

That’s about to change, because while the biomass story below is about cute, sometimes ridiculous animals producing energy, it’s also rather gruesome and difficult to joke about.

by Sarah Dowdey

October 7, 2009
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I’ve always heard it’s not a great idea to name any animal you plan to eat eventually. Start calling your rooster “Callixtus” and you may feel a bit guilty when you pick off his harem one by one for roasting and cast him as the centerpiece in your coq au vin.

Such sage advice probably protects livestock owners from forming petlike attachments to their animals. But what if your livestock isn’t bound for the butcher (at least not anytime soon)?

by Sarah Dowdey

October 5, 2009
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Katie and I spent a beautiful autumnal Atlanta day at the grand reopening of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum last week. After speeches, singing and ribbon-cutting, we got to take a turn through the renovated and expanded museum and library.

Of course the new digs are chock-full of high-tech features and interactive displays. But there’s also plenty of presidential memorabilia, including what’s perhaps the second-most-famous glass-enclosed cardigan in the world, or reproduction at least (my No. 1 contender being Mr. Rogers’ red cable-knit housed at the Smithsonian).

by Sarah Dowdey

September 29, 2009
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I spent half my weekend and all of my subsequent commutes to work raptly reading “The Devil in the White City.” While the book focuses on the intense concentration of design and murder taking place in Gilded Age Chicago, a fair number of bikes have also tooled through the story’s pages. Safety bikes, that is.

The safety bike — two evenly sized wheels set on a frame much like that of today’s bicycles — replaced the dangerous and sometimes deadly high-wheelers, transforming cycling from a young man’s sporting pursuit to an easy, everyday way for getting around.

Copenhagen may be on the verge of a subsequent biking revolution, although this time the change is on the ground. FanStuff’s Tracy Wilson forwarded me an article from io9 laying out the Danish city’s plan for a bike superhighway.

by Sarah Dowdey

September 25, 2009
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A few weeks ago, Katie and I podcasted about the Newsies and the two great publishing giants of yellow journalism: Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. So when I saw Hearst’s name pop up again just a few days later in Sierra magazine, I was surprised by the coincidence — especially when I saw that it was linked to hemp. Yes, hemp, the ultimate misperceived plant.

by Sarah Dowdey

September 22, 2009
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The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference may not be until December, but world leaders and their top climate advisers are feeling the crunch. That’s the point of New York’s Climate Week and the United Nations Secretary General’s Summit on Climate Change: to turn up the pressure in advance of the bureaucratic, intense December session of talks, and to give the leaders a chance to lay it out early, sans details.