You can find more posts on climate change science, policy, and news on Climate 411.
Have you ever spent time scrolling through NASA's image gallery? Some of the pictures are absolutely mesmerizing. I particularly like "Blue Marble" (below the fold), which was stitched together using satellite data.
Satellites provide more than pretty pictures, though. Our ability to understand and predict climate change depends on continuous high-quality satellite data.
Unfortunately, this critical data stream is threatened by budget cuts and lack of political support. In 2005, the National Academies assessed the situation and deemed it "alarming". Three years later, the outlook has not improved.
Follow me over the fold to learn more about why this is important, how this critical resource is threatened, and what the next administration needs to do about it.
The second installation did not go over very well, and I accept the blame for it. It was without structure, and this one will have a bit.
This time there is a topic: petroleum. This is not to say that other questions are not welcome, but the focus of this post is questions regarding that substance.
You can find more posts on climate change science, policy, and news on Climate 411.
What does "wildlife conservation" mean to you? Setting aside land? Restoring habitat? Reducing local stresses to species or ecosystems? These are the conventional methods. But because of rapid climate change, scientists in a recent paper say this may not be enough:
[T]he future for many species and ecosystems is so bleak that assisted colonization might be their best chance.
Assisted colonization - moving species to sites where they aren't native - is a high-risk suggestion. There are many cases where introduced species have become invasive and wreaked havoc on economies, human health, and native ecosystems.
So why would some of the world's leading biologists make such a suggestion?
Last time was fun for me, and I hope the readers as well. We will try another episode, to see if this is viable.
Please consider this as an open thread for any and all questions related to science and technology. If I do not know an answer, I will say so and ask others in the community with expertise to reply.
As usual, I am dancing naked, and will not look up anything on Wikipedia or in reference books except for the times when some numbers are required, such as the heat of formation of items. Unfortunately, I can not keep all of those figures in my head.
On May 31, 2010, NASA may send Space Shuttle Missions STS-133 to the International Space Station, which, if launched, will end all manned space flight by NASA until 2015 at the earliest, leaving the US without any manned space flight capabilities for a minimum of five years.
In order to get astronauts to the Space Station, NASA would have to rely on Russia's Soyuz Launch vehicle during this time period. However, the Iran Non-Proliferation Act generally forbids anyone from buying space technology from Russia, unless the President decides Russia is trying to prevent Iran from expanding its nuclear program.
Welcome back to Science Saturday, where the Overnight News Digest crew informs and entertains you with this week's news about science, space, and the environment.
There was a lunar eclipse today. Unfortunately, those of us in North America couldn't see it. To make up for it, here is a video of the last lunar eclipse back in February.
More on the eclipse and other science stories after the jump.
This diary was originally posted to Daily Kos on September 6, 2006. Normal diary schedule should resume starting next week. Sorry for the absence this summer.
A while back I posted a diary on the American Eel. There is another species of eel on the New England shores that is less well known. The conger eel (Conger oceanicus) is rarely seen, even by the most dedicated fishermen. It is extremely shy, spending most of its time hiding out in caves or rock crevices. It is also strictly nocturnal, active only at night when it comes out to prey on fish and crustaceans.
Congers are true eels, having a continuous vertical fin. That is the dorsal, ventral and caudal (tail) fins are all joined with no breaks in between. And they get huge. An adult conger can reach a length of nine feet and weigh over a hundred pounds. It is perhaps the largest shallow water fish on our coasts.
Plenty of predictions about the future, whether speculative fiction or actual policy goals of governments, involve robots that walk, roll or fly around human beings. They go about their business. They are not impeded by us, nor are we impeded by them. They do our bidding flawlessly and without second thoughts.
It is a pretty neat image. It's pretty awesome to just tell a dinner plate with wheels on to go vacuum the house, and it can - and does. You can do the same with a lawnmower. You may even be able to do that with automated bomb disposal machines, which lack the dexterity and cleverness of human technicians but have the distinct advantage of being replaceable.
Even, some day, we might see machines capable of acting entirely independently of human supervision. Here's where we cut to uncomfortable reminiscences of Terminator or Stealth.
The Escalator Effect. Rising temperatures are changing mountain ecosystems as the heat forces some species upwards — until there is nowhere left to go. Emma Marris reports on the 'escalator effect', which is threatening species worldwide.
Over the past few weeks, various members of teh online liberal/progressive community, that included quite a few Kossaks, worked together in a democratic fashion to create the Netroots Platform
For those of you who have just joined us, check out Democracylover in NYC's mothership diary entry, to get the whole picture. For the Netroots Science & Technology Plank, we had 19 Contributors, and 11 different versions. Join me over the fold to read the final version
Through, No Man's Land, the family wheeled past fields that just been turned, the grass upside down. People in sputtering cars roared by honking, hooting at the cowboy family in the horse-drawn wagon, churning up dust in their faces. The children kept asking if they were getting any closer to Texas and if it would look different from this long strip of Oklahoma. They seldom saw a tree in Cimarron County. There wasn't even grass for the horse team; the sod that hadn't been turned was frozen and brown. Windmills broke the plain, next to dugouts and sod houses and still-forming villages. Resting for a long spell at midday, the children played around a buffalo wallow, the ground mashed. Cimarron is a Mexican hybrid word, descended from the Apache who spent many nights in these same buffalo wallows. It means "wanderer".[pp. 14-15]
Todays Nature Journal (a top-tier science journal from the UK), has an excellent summary of the state of non-fossil fuel technologies, their capacities, and what it will take to meet power demand in the absence of burning fossil fuels. I think that most of the material is behind a subscription, so I thought it might be helpful to both point you to the article here, and to do a little summary below the flip.
A federal judge says the University of California can deny course credit to applicants from Christian high schools whose textbooks declare the Bible infallible and reject evolution.
I did a search on this and hadn't seen anything show up. If it is a duplicate, please let me know.
Update: Sorry, my local rag of a paper said it was awarded. The linked story only shows Flora as being on the shortlist. Even so, the rest of the concerns are still valid.
A new national biological lab is being built in a Flora, Mississippi, a small town of only 1500 people. This has caused a great deal of concern, as the town was among the lowest ranked among the 17 applicants.
The Homeland Security Department swept aside evaluations by government experts and named Mississippi -- home to powerful U.S. lawmakers with sway over the agency -- as one of five finalists for a new $451 million laboratory to study biological threats, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press.
Today's news that we may set a new Arctic sea-ice melt record in 2008 is, along with a number of other recent stories, further indication that Climaticide is proceeding full speed ahead the Arctic.
Warming temperatures resulting from our continued emissions of greenhouse gases are causing sea ice to melt (at both poles) at ever faster rates, ice shelves to collapse, 30 degrees-above-average temperatures in areas of the Arctic, the potential migration of sea creatures from the Pacific to the Arctic and the Atlantic after a 3.5 million year hiatus, and creating a new area for global conflict as the Northwest Passage opens and polar nations scramble to lay claims for both strategic and economic reasons.
If you need to pull an all-nighter tonight, forget the caffeine. Just join me below the fold.
Welcome back to Science Saturday, where the Overnight News Digest crew informs and entertains you with this week's news about science, space, and the environment.
This week, instead of a photo gallery or slide show, Science Saturday presents a top story.
TAIYUAN, CHINA -- Su Aimin spat on the ground, and admired the result.
"You see, it's white," said the 33-year-old production manager at Taiyuan Iron & Steel, pointing to his saliva. "Before, it was black. I'm not kidding."
Although Beijing is still struggling to make the skies clear for the Olympics, a massive cleanup effort before the Summer Games has given people here a taste of fresh air. They want to keep it that way, but business groups are likely to lobby for an easing of the restrictions.
More science, space, and environment stories after the jump.
You can find more posts on climate change science, policy, and news on Climate 411.
Transitioning to a clean, low-carbon economy brings a lot of benefits: newjobs, cleaner air and improved public health are just a few examples. Here's another reason why we need to act now to cut emissions and stop global warming:
Even with immediate, aggressive, and sustained cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, damage to fragile ecosystems is virtually certain, and the Greenland ice sheet is still at risk.
Follow me over the fold for a graph that says it better than I can:
