Posts

May 20, 2013

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12:00 PM | Clever Drones See Truth Of Ice Sheet Melt And Sea Level Rise In...

Clever Drones See Truth Of Ice Sheet Melt And Sea Level Rise In harsh arctic regions, it’s very tough to get good data while on the ground. Researchers at the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) use aircraft including unmanned UAV drones and elegant new software modelling to watch changes in ice. via Live Science Videos.

May 19, 2013

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7:38 AM | What Lies Beneath Arctic Ice?

On Thursday we lowered a camera into an ice borehole to get a look at the underside of the ice. In the following video, you can clearly see the algae living in the bottom of the ice due to their pigments, which they use to harvest light. These organisms are not frozen into the ice; [...]

May 18, 2013

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11:18 PM | 99% of Scientific Papers Agree On Climate Threat.

My friend John Cook, (an Australian Physicist who runs the superb website Skeptical Science) is the lead author of a paper in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters that has gotten worldwide attention this past week. Not because the findings are a surprise to the science community, but because the public is surprised! THE GREAT AMERICAN DISCONNECT Dr. Ed Maibach at the George Mason University Center for Climate Change knows exactly how bug a …

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11:08 AM | Ocean heat puts pressure on poorest fisheries

The first evidence that climate change has affected fishing catches, revealed by William Cheung from the University of British Columbia and his team, shows tropical countries are set to be hardest hit.

Cheung, W., Watson, R. & Pauly, D. (2013). Signature of ocean warming in global fisheries catch, Nature, 497 (7449) 365-368. DOI: 10.1038/nature12156

Payne, M. (2013). Fisheries: Climate change at the dinner table, Nature, 497 (7449) 320-321. DOI: 10.1038/497320a

Citation

May 17, 2013

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10:00 PM | A Week in Science with RiAus- 17 May 2013 Week in Science is...

A Week in Science with RiAus- 17 May 2013 Week in Science is the science news brought to you by RiAus. This week: Skin cells cloned into embryonic cells Apes and monkeys go way back Pollution may increase kids’ risk for diabetes Common plants, animals threatened by climate change Agent Orange exposure linked to deadliest form of prostate cancer in Vietnam War vets Alligator study prompts dreams of renewable teeth Printing electronics on to paper You can follow A Week in Science throughout […]

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9:25 PM | Let's agree that we're in agreement about the climate and move on

An international team of scientists recently surveyed almost 12,000 climate science research publications to gauge the consensus on manmade global warming among people who know lots about climate science. They did this because some people still like to pretend like there’s plenty of skepticism and doubt about what’s causing all this. What did they find? Well, of the 4,000 papers that declared a position on the cause of global warming since 1991, 97.1% of them agreed that humans […]

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5:01 PM | High School Students Devise More Accurate Climate Modeling Method

Fossilized leaves can tell us a lot about out climate history Frank Kovalchek via Wikimedia By studying the way leaves shrink when they fossilize, a team of more than 100 high school students could build more accurate models of climate change. A team of high school students have co-authored a scientific journal paper with their University of Arizona grad student instructor that could have a serious impact on the reliability of climate models. Their work details the impact of shrinkage on dried, […]

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3:15 PM | National Grid Joins the Corporate Circle

The Earth Institute is pleased to welcome National Grid into the Corporate Circle, a collective partnership of leading corporations from across the globe committed to pursuing sustainable development objectives. Through a generous gift, National Grid will support sustainable energy research at the Earth Institute.

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10:24 AM | Ice Capades

Fieldwork is exciting and inspiring, leading scientists to new ideas and places, and observations about how the world works. Spring on Alaska’s North Slope provides an especially productive environment for fieldwork. When the sun never sets, it’s easy to linger in the field and the lab long into the well-lit night. Our team spent about [...]

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12:52 AM | Thunderstorms and Cities: Is there a connection?

Guest Post from Bob Ryan Meteorologist for WJLA TV in Washington DC (This post appeared on the WJLA Weather Blog) Are cities changing summer thunderstorms? This is a follow-up blog to a story I had on our 11PM news Tuesday May 14. You can see the actual story below but I wanted to expand a few things beyond 1 minute and 30 seconds. Here’s the tease :>). Do you live in …

May 16, 2013

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8:35 PM | Carbon Dioxide Milestone Revised by NOAA

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced last week that carbon dioxide concentrations at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii surpassed the milestone 400 parts per million for a sustained period. NOAA has since revised the figure—on the basis of computer analysis—saying its May 9 readings actually remained fractions of a point below the historic level, coming in at…

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3:29 PM | Climate Change Consensus Tracked

A new study finds near-unanimity among climate scientists: humans are causing global warming. Continue reading →

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3:00 PM | Thinking Like a Pirate – or a Scientist

New understandings about how scientists think have inspired changes in school science standards.

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4:00 AM | Settling Into Life in the Arctic

While I arrived in Barrow, Alaska on Tuesday, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory scientists Andy Juhl and Craig Aumack, and graduate student Kyle Kinzler from Arizona State University, got here one week ago. They took a few days to unpack and set up their lab (everything they need to work here must be shipped to Barrow in [...]

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4:00 AM | Settling In to Work and Life in Barrow

While I arrived in Barrow, Alaska on Tuesday, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory scientists Andy Juhl and Craig Aumack, and graduate student Kyle Kinzler from Arizona State University, got here one week ago. They took a few days to unpack and set up their lab (everything they need to work here must be shipped to Barrow in [...]

May 15, 2013

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6:52 PM | Measuring the Effect of China’s Arctic Interests

Of non-Arctic states, China has shown the most interest in the Arctic as climate change opens up the region to new economic development. The ways in which China attempts to balance its economic interests and environmental responsibilities within its energy policy may provide a predictor of its future behavior in the Arctic.

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12:00 AM | Eugenie Scott: Deja vu all over again: Denialism of climate...

Eugenie Scott: Deja vu all over again: Denialism of climate change and of evolution Eugenie Scott, a former university professor, is the Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education. She has been a leading activist opposing creationism/intelligent design for over twenty-five years, and is an expert on the educational, legal, scientific, and religious issues surrounding evolution. Eugenie is the author of Evolution vs Creationism and co-editor of Not in Our Classrooms: Why […]

May 14, 2013

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7:08 PM | Investigating Life in the Ice

Andy Juhl and Craig Aumack, microbiologists from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, are spending a month in Barrow, Alaska studying algae in and below sea ice, and how our warming climate may impact these important organisms. They’re investigating the factors that control the growth of algae inside of sea ice, how these algal communities are [...]

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3:25 PM | Conservation biology – let’s get integrated!

This was initially posted at: http://blogs.egu.eu/palaeoblog/?p=600 Conserving our world’s biodiversity is currently one of the biggest challenges we face. I wrote a post recently about some of the issues palaeontologists face when trying to make our science relative to current conservation … Continue reading →

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3:00 PM | Are Doughnuts Destroying Forests?

A conversation with a forestry expert reveals doughnuts as unlikely contributors to global deforestation.

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6:59 AM | Global Cooling Is A Silly Myth

John Cook over at Skeptical Science has produced an excellent video, that explains why anyone who telling you the climate has stopped warming, or that the planet is now cooling is wrong. Utterly wrong. It’s in the same league as HAARP and Chem-trails. This video comes out in the same week that the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by William Happer and Harrison Schmidt that contained all the usual canards. All of …

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4:44 AM | Confusion and distortion – has global warming stopped?

There’s a mantra circulating at the moment claiming that global warming “stopped 17 years ago.” It is of course being pushed by the pseudosceptics in the climate denial echo chamber. However, even people who should know better have been heard … Continue reading →

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12:00 AM | Trickle down science denial, from evolution to climate...

Trickle down science denial, from evolution to climate change Science education is under assault again. Not just evolution education, but climate change education. NCSE policy director Dr. Minda Berbeco traces the history of science denial, the links between evolution- and climate change deniers, recent legislation targeting both, the role of the Next Generation Science Standards, and more. Where: East Bay Atheists, Berkeley, CA. When: 4/21/2013 Duration: 01:04:23 via NCSE.

May 13, 2013

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6:29 PM | Climate and Conquest: How Did Genghis Khan Rise?

Eight hundred years ago, relatively small armies of mounted warriors suddenly exploded outward from the cold, arid high-elevation grasslands of Mongolia and conquered the largest contiguous empire in history. They reshaped world geography, culture and history in ways that still resound today. How did they do it? Among the forces at work: the Mongols’ fast horses and brilliant cavalry tactics; their openness to new technologies; and the political genius of Genghis Khan. Now, a research group […]

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5:00 PM | Birth of a Giant Iceberg — Climate Change Evidence? An...

Birth of a Giant Iceberg — Climate Change Evidence? An enormous plain of Antarctic ice is splitting in two. Airborne NASA scientists discovered the nearly 20 mile-long crack during a research flight, capturing its contours by laser imaging. From our video series Over Earth with Andrea Mustain. Discover more about this at: http://goo.gl/J8K6I via Video From Space.

May 12, 2013

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10:12 PM | edwardspoonhands: Google Earth Engine is a joint project...

edwardspoonhands: Google Earth Engine is a joint project between Google and NASA that allows anyone access to a 30 year time-lapse of the surface of the earth. I made a video about how amazing, terrifying, and important it is. We’ve had an eye on Earth for several decades now, and thanks to the new tool from Google that Hank talks about in his video above, we can see our profound effect on the planet in just a single young lifetime. He notes that we aren’t very good at reconciling […]

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8:50 PM | edwardspoonhands: jtotheizzoe: climateadaptation: jtotheizzoe:...

edwardspoonhands: jtotheizzoe: climateadaptation: jtotheizzoe: 400. For the first time in human history, carbon dioxide levels reached an average daily level of 400 parts per million, as reported this week. The last time the atmosphere contained this much carbon dioxide was 3 million years ago. This new data comes from the Mauna Loa observatory and a set of data continuously collected since 1958: The Keeling curve. This represents almost a 50% increase since the beginning of the industrial […]

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5:08 AM | climateadaptation: jtotheizzoe: 400. For the first time in...

climateadaptation: jtotheizzoe: 400. For the first time in human history, carbon dioxide levels reached an average daily level of 400 parts per million, as reported this week. The last time the atmosphere contained this much carbon dioxide was 3 million years ago. This new data comes from the Mauna Loa observatory and a set of data continuously collected since 1958: The Keeling curve. This represents almost a 50% increase since the beginning of the industrial age. Although there is some […]

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2:27 AM | 400. For the first time in human history, carbon dioxide levels...

400. For the first time in human history, carbon dioxide levels reached an average daily level of 400 parts per million, as reported this week. The last time the atmosphere contained this much carbon dioxide was 3 million years ago. This new data comes from the Mauna Loa observatory and a set of data continuously collected since 1958: The Keeling curve. This represents almost a 50% increase since the beginning of the industrial age. Although there is some seasonal variability (that little […]

May 11, 2013

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11:07 PM | “Incontrovertible” is it, Rodney?

I wonder if many politicians, or in this case ex-politicians, are capable of seeing the irony and contradictions in their public statements. Or perhaps porkies are just the stock in trade of politicians so irony doesn’t even come into it. … Continue reading →