A Year in the Life of Earth’s CO2
An eerily beautiful video, created by a NASA super-computer, showing how human-generated carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere in winter and retreats in summer as…
Whose Temperature Should You Be Taking?
While passengers arriving from West Africa at Dulles International Airport last week were having their temperatures taken, this woman was sitting on the other side of…
Meet the (Brain-Dead) Press
Various blogs, including this one, have noted that the Sunday morning network news shows have been devoting no more than a few minutes each year to…
Glacier Before and After
This was the Muir Glacier in Alaska in 1882. And here it is side-by-side with a photo from the exact same spot, taken by Bruce F.…
Why Boulder, Colorado?
With huge floods in Colorado, fires in California, twin hurricanes on the two coasts of Mexico, and all the other weather catastrophes of the summer season,…
Are You a Martian?
Mars today, and how it may have looked in its early days with what astronomers believe was a large northern ocean. Ladies, you may not,…
Snuggling Up with the Keystone XL Pipeline
The arguments against digging up the tar sands of the northern U.S. states and Canada and sending the oil through the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline to…
Naming Storms After Climate Change Deniers
Here’s a splendid notion from an organization called Climate Name Change. They’re proposing that hurricanes and storms should no longer be named after folks like Sandy,…
Days in the Life of a Forest Fire
Videographer Matt Johnson witnessed the three enormous forest fires that made up Colorado’s West Fork Complex Wildfire in June. He writes: [readon] I stayed a little…
The Other Stone Henge
The Avebury henge, by Gregg Parker. This is the Avebury Stone Circle, which surrounds the village of Avebury, near Stonehenge in southwest England. Built nearly 3,000…
A Week of Extreme Weather
A whole neighborhood of Granbury, Texas, was leveled in one of the tornadoes that tore up whole swaths of the United States last week. But that…
Greenhouse Gases Just Gone Through the Roof
Last week, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere went through the roof. Another roof. The previous roof was 350 parts per million (ppm) –…
As Ocean Rises, Kiribati Islands Plan to Evacuate
The remains of a gas station submerged as the waters rise over Kiribati. The President of Kiribati calls it “migration with dignity.” The ocean is rising.…
Life on Europa?
The ice that covers Europa is 60 miles thick. But the ocean that it covers is a rich, salty mix that appears not to be very different in makeup from our own ocean. And, according to a new study, there are breaks in the ice that allow the water to come up to the surface, So there’s a constant exchange of ice and water. And that means if you want to know what’s going on in the ocean, 60 miles down, you only have to scrape a little ice off the surface.
Sounds like a mission for a Mars-type rover. And that’s exactly what NASA is thinking, too.
Warmer Winters All Across the U.S.
Climate Central has an interactive map showing that, regardless of snowstorms, winters have been warming especially fast all across the United States.
More Clues for Life on Mars
Fresh from analyzing a sample of rock, the Mars rover Curiosity has answered a key question: Could the Red Planet have once supported life? “From what…
Comet Heading for Mars
In the wake of the asteroid fly-by two weeks ago, and the meteorite that slammed into Russia the same day, we now hear that Mars might…
No Need to Smoke in Beijing!
You can save money on cigarettes in Beijing. No need to light up; just go outside and take a deep breath. You can see the vast…
Will Humans Become Hobbits?
A hobbit in the movie, and what real-life hobbits (homo floresiensis) looked like when they flourished on the island of Flores in Indonesia for about 80,000…
Most Americans Call Climate Change a High Priority
Some recent facts from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication: * Most Americans (77%) say global warming should be a “very high”, “high”, or “medium”…