Archives for December, 2009
Posted by Looking for a truly geeked-out way to spread holiday cheer? Hubble’s got your back. The space telescope’s imaging team combined some of Hubble’s prettiest pictures with seasonal designs to create “messages of joy and peace … illuminated by the natural splendor of the universe.” Check it: Featuring supernova remnant 1006 6,850 light-years away Picture combines…
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Posted by By Daniel Grossman Hundreds of climate negotiators have flown home. Thousands of police officers have put away riot gear and returned to routine patrols. Copenhagen’s only and newly-acquired water cannon is no longer on alert. The Copenhagen Conference is over. And, around the world, exhausted scientists, activists, diplomats and members of the press, among others,…
Read the whole post »By Daniel Grossman from Copenhagen Hans Meltofte–spry and with a carefully trimmed mustache and beard–chooses his words with care, as scientists do when imparting their research. It surprised me, therefore, that this eminent ornithologist told me in Copenhagen this week that he had found recent changes in northeast Greenland, “scary.” Meltofte founded an ecological research…
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Posted by Update: The COP15 Web site is reporting around 10:30 p.m. that the U.S., China, India, and South Africa have reached a “meaningful agreement” on climate change—earlier than anticipated. A senior U.S. official who talked to the Associated Press said that the deal was not enough to slow warming, however. Today the conference center was transformed…
Read the whole post »Update: The COP15 Web site is reporting around 10:30 p.m. that the U.S., China, India, and South Africa have reached a “meaningful agreement” on climate change—earlier than anticipated. A senior U.S. official who talked to the Associated Press said that the deal was not enough to slow warming, however. Today the conference center was transformed…
Read the whole post »By Daniel Grossman in Copenhagen Temperatures dropped and big, unseasonal flakes of snow swirled in the breeze earlier this week in Copenhagen, turning skies gray and streets slippery. But the change discussed in conversations wherever you go in this ornately decorated city is not the week’s weather but the coming century’s climate. Nowhere does climate…
Read the whole post »With the tension at the Copenhagen climate conference so thick you could slice it with a slab of melting Arctic ice, I decided today would be a fine one to check out the meditation and prayer room. Tucked off the buzzing main hall, it’s a spartan and serene white room with a few plants and…
Read the whole post »Wade Davis Weighs in on CO2
Posted by Ford Cochran on December 16, 2009 Eloquent anthropologist, ethnobotanist, and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis sends word from Copenhagen, where he’s roaming the streets, exhibitions, and meeting halls recording his observations of the United Nations COP15 meetings on climate change. The result is a glorious blog full of insightful notes and video shorts. Wade’s perspective forms part of the thought-provoking and…
Read the whole post »Dispatches from theCopenhagen Climate Conference—Smart Bike Unveiled
Posted by Tasha Eichenseher of National Geographic on December 16, 2009 A new hybrid “smart bike” technology that can push you up hills and warn you of pollution hot spots was rolled out today in the heart of this city of cyclists. Called the Copenhagen Wheel, the sleek, circular device is packed with a Swiss army knife of motors, GPS, modems, and sensors that…
Read the whole post »With the tension at the Copenhagen climate conference so thick you could slice it with a slab of melting Arctic ice, I decided today would be a fine one to check out the meditation and prayer room. Tucked off the buzzing main hall, it’s a spartan and serene white room with a few plants and…
Read the whole post »Dispatches from theCopenhagen Climate Conference—Smart Bike Unveiled
Posted by Tasha Eichenseher of National Geographic on December 16, 2009 A new hybrid “smart bike” technology that can push you up hills and warn you of pollution hot spots was rolled out today in the heart of this city of cyclists. Called the Copenhagen Wheel, the sleek, circular device is packed with a Swiss army knife of motors, GPS, modems, and sensors that…
Read the whole post »Dispatches from theCopenhagen Climate Conference—Acting Now
Posted by Tasha Eichenseher of National Geographic on December 15, 2009 As I stood shivering outside the Copenhagen Cathedral this afternoon, listening to global religious leaders tell us why we should save God’s green earth from climate change, an elderly man walked to the front of the crowd with a (misspelled) sign that read “Bla bla bla ACT NOW.” With his long white beard and portly…
Read the whole post »By Daniel Grossman in Copenhagen Since I began taking interest in global warming, I’ve heard scientists say “beware of surprises.” In the esoteric field of climate research, a surprise is bad: a dangerous unanticipated change to Earth’s climate, weather patterns, ocean currents and other “Earth systems,” or life on the planet. We usually expect that…
Read the whole post »—Picture courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech Yesterday NASA successfully hurtled another telescope into the heavens: the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Judging from the plethora of news coverage, WISE has quite a few people pretty excited. After all, NASA has only a handful of operational space telescopes up there right now … roughly 15 by my count…
Read the whole post »Dispatches from theCopenhagen Climate Conference—Acting Now
Posted by Tasha Eichenseher of National Geographic on December 15, 2009 As I stood shivering outside the Copenhagen Cathedral this afternoon, listening to global religious leaders tell us why we should save God’s green earth from climate change, an elderly man walked to the front of the crowd with a (misspelled) sign that read “Bla bla bla ACT NOW.” With his long white beard and portly…
Read the whole post »By Daniel Grossman in Copenhagen David Richardson, a lively, friendly man, devotes his life to a goal some people consider quixotic at best and possibly dangerous at worst: to reduce the number of humans on Earth by about two-thirds. Richardson’s views are long- and strongly-held. When only five he noticed that people with large families…
Read the whole post »When National Geographic set about the “increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge” 122 years ago none of its founders could have imagined quite what that would encompass. One of the early editors of National Geographic magazine, the official journal of the National Geographic Society, defined the Society’s mission as covering ”the world and all that’s in…
Read the whole post »Adventurers, Youth Unite for Climate Action
Posted by Ford Cochran on December 10, 2009 James Balog presents time-lapse photography from his Extreme Ice Survey at the United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark. It is day three of the United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen. I’m here leading Expedition Copenhagen with a team of young people from across the American midwest. What strikes me the most about this…
Read the whole post »The last survivor of an unknown and uncontacted Amazon tribe has been targeted by gunmen, Survival, A UK-based group that advocates for tribal peoples, said today. The only known images of the last survivor of the unknown tribe, who is known locally as the “Man of the Hole,” were captured fleetingly by filmmaker Vincent Carelli in his…
Read the whole post »Photo Contest Winners Take World by Storm
Posted by Ford Cochran on December 8, 2009 What do a volcano straddling the border of Chile and Bolivia, a 97-year-old woman dressed in her Sunday best at a bus stop in Chamblee, Georgia, and a peppermint shrimp in a sponge at the bottom of Bonaire’s Margate Bay all have in common? Each is the subject of a winning photograph (categories People, Places,…
Read the whole post »The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released this space picture of Pearl Harbor this week, on the 68th anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Naval base in the harbor by military forces of Japan. The attack caused the U.S. to enter World War II. The photo was made by an astronaut on…
Read the whole post »As tens of thousands of delegates–heads of government, scientists and journalists among them–gather in Copenhagen over the next two weeks to discuss what can be done to slow the rate of climate change, you may be sure that there will be a flood of speeches, charts, graphs, and reports. Trying to make sense of all that’s…
Read the whole post »Biologists and veterinarians are urging the U.S. Congress to hold off on a ban on trade in pythons and other large exotic snakes until research into how much of a threat they pose to U.S. ecosystems has been thoroughly reviewed by independent scientists. In a letter to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary (full text at…
Read the whole post »Visitors to the WWF Arctic tent at the Copenhagen Climate Conference (COP15), which started today, were greeted by an ice sculpture by artist Mark Coreth. made from a chunk of ice from the Arctic. Ice Bear has a very powerful message, he says. “This might be in the form of a polar bear, but actually…
Read the whole post »Feeding birds can have profound effects on their future and perhaps even create new species in a relatively short span opf time, German scientists report. According to research published in the current edition of the journal Current Biology, what was once a single population in central Europe of birds known as blackcaps has been split into…
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