Is ‘global warming’ the right term to use?

Why some think global warming is in need of rebranding.

via mothernaturenetwork

What if you had 15 minutes’ notice to leave your home, and you didn’t know when you’d be coming back — or what shape your home would be when you did?

Could you find your key documents, medications, ID, devices, cables? Sturdy shoes, suitable clothing, stuff to comfort your kids and control your pets? Mementos, valuables, things you couldn’t live without? While trying to stay calm, keep your family calm, and figure out what’s going on?

I ponder this, sometimes, as an academic exercise: when I’m watching horrific tornado footage, or wondering how far inland a tropical storm is going to come. I’ve lived on a hurricane coast (Texas) and in a tornado alley (Minnesota), and I thought regularly about preparedness while I lived there. But now I live mostly in Atlanta, and sometimes in inland Maine, and my rare thoughts about preparedness extend mostly to keeping documents in a fireproof safe and making sure the flashlights scattered around the house have good batteries.

Last night I learned how shortsighted that was. TL;DR: All’s well, my house didn’t burn down, and I got a useful reminder about how you can be taken by surprise. (Full article: The Risks You Don’t Think of: A Plea to Pack a ‘Go Bag’ | Wired Science | Wired.com)

via wildcat2030

I contemplate this sporadically and fortunately I have several friendships with people who maintain sustainable communities or maintain a renewable living with more than sufficient acres of land if I absolutely need to flee in the event of a drastic situation as this. I find I’m concerned more with a nationally critical solar storm, tornado, flood, meteor(ite), asteroid, or comet aftershock. But that’s because I live in 2013 and I understand how fragile our species is, how vulnerable we and our physical structures are, our dependency on electricity and ultimately, how helpless we are, even amongst our employed sophisticated technology.

Latest: Bill Nye on Tornadoes/Climate Change

(via carl-sagan)

Crowd-Sourcing Helps Map Global Emissions

Scientists launched an online “game” to better understand the sources of global warming gases. By engaging “citizen scientists,” the researchers hope to locate all the power plants around the world and quantify their CO2 emissions.

Source: Arizona State Univ.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/videos/2013/05/crowd-sourcing-helps-map-global-emissions

via Lab Equipment and skeptv.

Global Warming effects on the Arctic Ocean

The surface waters of a major portion of the Arctic Ocean are becoming saturated with carbon dioxide sooner than many scientists expected, all but halting the watery region’s ability to sop up more of the greenhouse gas from Earth’s atmosphere, new research finds.

To read the full article, please visit:
http://blogs.agu.org/geospace/2013/05/13/agu-video-prospects-dim-for-ice-free-arctic-ocean-helping-slow-global-warming/

via AGU videos and skeptv.

Advanced Alien Civilization Discovers Uninhabitable Planet

CONSTELLATION HYDRA—Dashing the hopes of those among them who believed the faraway world would surely prove habitable, astronomers from the Terxus II star system announced Thursday that a recently discovered planet remarkably like their own is in fact completely hostile to life.

According to scientists from the advanced alien civilization, despite possessing liquid water and a position just the right distance from its central star, the bluish-green terrestrial planet they have named RP-26 cannot sustain life due to its eroding landmasses, rapidly thinning atmosphere, and increasingly harsh climate.

“Theoretically, this place ought to be perfect,” leading Terxus astrobiologist Dr. Srin Xanarth said of the reportedly blighted planet located at the edge of a barred spiral arm in the Milky Way galaxy. “When our long-range satellites first picked it up, we honestly thought we’d hit the jackpot. We just assumed it would be a lush, green world filled with abundant natural resources. But unfortunately, its damaged biosphere makes it wholly unsuitable for living creatures of any kind.”

“It’s basically a dead planet,” she added. “We give it another 200 years, tops.”

The alien researchers stated that the dramatically warming atmosphere of RP-26 contains alarming amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, as well as an ozone layer that—for reasons they cannot begin to fathom—has been allowed to develop a gaping hole. They also noted the presence of melting polar icecaps, floods, and enough pollutants to poison “every last drop of the planet’s fresh water, if you can even call it that.”

Given the extreme toxicity of its environment, the Terxus scientists said they did not yet understand how the planet ever came to support single-cell organisms, let alone more complex species and intelligent life.

“Essentially, you have this entire world that’s a deathbed for everything still managing to live there,” said Dr. Xanarth, who estimates that tens of thousands of species on RP-26 go extinct every year. “And for whatever reason, members of its most dominant species choose to live above ground, where they are exposed to deadly ultraviolet rays and weather patterns that grow more and more violent all the time.”

“The majority of them live in crowded, dirty clusters along heavily contaminated bodies of water,” she continued. “It’s really all very sad.”

Alien scientists acknowledged that for all practical purposes, RP-26 is now little more than a giant ball of dirt emitting noxious fumes. But they also shared an artist’s rendering that depicts how the planet might have appeared in its recent past, when it reportedly contained flourishing ecosystems able to sustain an impressive diversity of species, and an atmosphere that was actually hospitable to organisms that breathe oxygen.

The advanced beings said they have concluded that any attempt to colonize or even travel to RP-26 would be a futile endeavor, because by the time they reached the distant planet its coastlines would have washed away, and the remaining landmasses would be plagued by widespread drought and famine.

“Frankly, it would be pretty pointless to explore it any further unless we wanted to study how things die,” Dr. Xanarth said. “It’s basically going to be an ugly, befouled rock covered in a thick soup of deadly chemicals. It would need to be terraformed before we could even walk on its surface, which, let’s face it, I don’t think anyone in their right mind would be willing to do.”

“As for the intelligent life-forms inhabiting that planet right now, God help them, because that whole place is going to hell,” she added. “It’s really a shame, too, because all our data suggests they would have made for really good eating.”

via theonion

Sometimes, you guys, sometimes……

(via thegreenurbanist)

As a speculative and scientific human being, I had a sudden thought today on the ideology behind heaven and hell..

When religions are stripped down to their core origin, they’re all simply methods created to explain the world as each culture/civilization were able to decipher it, providing insight via ‘mystical’ stories behind our existence and serve also as a tool to translate our behavior & decipher our consciousness/introspection.

However, on the conceptualization of heaven/hell & the metaphorical philosophy…

Hell, described as:
+ a state of separation or exclusion from God or the presence of God
+ a place of evil, torment, anguish, suffering, destruction
+ an extremely unpleasant and often inescapable situation

Hell has always been noted to be a place of unrelenting torture, primarily associated with fire & brimstone - which is an obsolete name for sulfur.

Heaven, described as:
+ an eternal state of communion with God; everlasting bliss
+ a condition or place of great happiness, delight or pleasure
+ a state of thought in which sin is absent and the harmony of divine
Mind is manifest

Heaven has always been noted to be a place of purity, enlightenment, evolution, a utopia of sorts.

As much as we all would love for heaven to actually exist in order to have some place of overwhelming joy present in the afterlife…we know nothing of said afterlife and what matters most to our survival and relevance to reality are the laws of nature that have not only been proven, but which are constantly tested, stretched and understood more each day due to the primary tool of science & mathematics, for which we gain true understanding of the world we live on, time/space we move within, the universe we were manifested amongst and the incredible connection we have to every living thing we choose to study and explore with our instinctive curiosity.

But what IF the heaven/hell analogy isn’t/wasn’t that far off?

Venus is our sister planet, visibly plagued by runaway global warming. Sulfuric rain, excessive heat & runaway global warming have plagued this world for billions of years. It’s complex and threatening biosphere is the ‘worst-case scenario’ in relation to our tiny, fragile planet. Venus is, in simple terms - a living hell.

Our home planet, Earth, is a utopia of sorts. From our abundant (albeit “finite”) resources, precise positioning in the habitable zone of this solar system, vast/diverse species of life, and of course - the hu(youu)mans. We haven’t (yet) discovered a similar planet teeming with life, let alone ‘intelligent’ life resembling a species such as ours.

Yet…here we are: A unique species for as far as the eye (or lens) can see. From an outsiders perspective, we are an incomplete species on the path to evolution, enlightenment and symbiosis with all the other residents of our home planet.

We squander away our ability to explore the cosmos and stifle our technological innovation by ignorantly perpetuating an addiction to money, control, self-interest, manipulation, false security, illusions of power and primitive traditions - all of which have pushed us to the brink of our existence in such a short span of time since we came into being in this particular corner of the universe.

The unfortunate reality is: if it weren’t for the human species, it truly would be “heaven” on Earth.

The punishment for our weak stewardship as explorers, scientists & ambassadors to this planet, is ultimately, that which we all fear. Extinction. Ecocide. The opposite of this way of life, effecting all living things.

A living hell.

We haven’t spent enough time on Venus to understand its history and if you will - ‘cosmic timeline’ - in order to understand whether or not there was life present on this planet at some point. And if so, what brought about such a rapid change (if any) to cause the environmental and atmospheric conditions to suffocate its biosphere to the state it resides now?

Point being: when viewing these metaphors (via multiple religions) under this perspective, surely - heaven and hell are very real. They serve as byproducts or “results” of the world we wish to exist in. And because we presently live in solitude from what we currently view in the observable universe….

I’d say that we have a pretty solid ultimatum laid down at our feet for how we must conduct ourselves on this planet, symbiotically, together. Synchronicity within a small blue sphere, orchestrated organically to propel our own evolution and enlightenment, in order to strategically and delicately explore the backyard universe from which all life originated from in the first place.

sagansense.
February 20, 2012.

Stay Curious. Heaven and Hell | Carl Sagan on Global Warming

Major Glacier Calving Captured In Time-lapse Video

Researchers from Swansea University in the United Kingdom working near Greenland’s Helheim Glacier spotted a spectacular calving event on July 12, 2010. They captured the glacier dropping icebergs into the fjord in this time-lapse video.

via skeptv, original post via Live Science Videos.

Humans began contributing to environmental lead pollution as early as 8,000 years ago, according to a Univ. of Pittsburgh research report.

The Pitt research team detected the oldest-discovered remains of human-derived lead pollution in the world in the northernmost region of Michigan, suggesting metal pollution from mining and other human activities appeared far earlier in North America than in Europe, Asia, and South America. Their findings are highlighted on the cover of the latest issue of Environmental Science & Technology.

“Humanity’s environmental legacy spans thousands of years, back to times traditionally associated with hunter-gatherers. Our records indicate that the influence of early Native Americans on the environment can be detected using lake sediments,” says David Pompeani, lead author of the research paper and a PhD candidate in Pitt’s Department of Geology and Planetary Science. “These findings have important implications for interpreting both the archeological record and environmental history of the upper Great Lakes.”

The Univ. of Pittsburgh research team — which included, from Pitt’s Department of Geology and Planetary Science, Mark Abbott, associate professor of paleoclimatology, and Daniel Bain, assistant professor of catchment science, along with Pitt alumnus Byron Steinman (A&S ’11G) — examined Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula because it is the largest source of pure native copper in North America. Early surveys of the region in the 1800s identified prehistoric human mining activity in the form of such tools as hammerstones, ladders and pit mines.

The team from the Department of Geology and Planetary Science investigated the timing, location, and magnitude of ancient copper mining pollution. Sediments were collected in June 2010 from three lakes located near ancient mine pits. They analyzed the concentration of lead, titanium, magnesium, iron, and organic matter in the collected sediment cores — finding distinct decade- to century-scale increases in lead pollution preserved from thousands of years ago.

“These data suggest that measurable levels of lead were emitted by preagricultural societies mining copper on Keweenaw Peninsula starting as early as 8,000 years ago,” says Pompeani. “Collectively, these records have confirmed, for the first time, that prehistoric pollution from the Michigan Copper Districts can be detected in the sediments found in nearby lakes.”

By contrast, reconstructions of metal pollution from other parts of the world, such as Asia, Europe, and South America, only provide evidence for lead pollution during the last 3,000 years, says Pompeani.

“We’re hopeful that our work can be used in the future to better understand past environmental changes,” says Abbott.

The team is currently investigating places near other prehistoric copper mines surrounding Lake Superior.

Coral Reefs Face Long Recovery In Face Of Climate Change

17 years of data and study of coral off the coast of South America which suffered badly in the 1997-98 El Nino has been analysed by revealing that the system took a long 13 years to recover. This news is startling but at the same time relieving as the recovery time although long on our terms, is very short on the terms of ecological systems around the world. This means that they will likely be able to adapt quite well to the changing climate as the years progress.

This is an important finding as coral reefs are thought to be home to 25% of the known marine species and thus are the foundation for marine life. If the reefs were slow to adapt then the entire marine ecosystem would suffer terribly with the predicted rises in temperatures across the world; and the knock on effect to the rest of the ecosystem would be devastating. The comparatively short temperature change registered around the time of the El Nino disturbance had a very large effect and thus suggests that the reefs are very susceptible to local changes, and while they can recover, we have to take great care to not push them so far that they cannot recover. This research and analysis has very important effects on how we consider our effect on the marine environment as we work towards fixing and mitigating the damage of climate change in the years to come.

via theedgeofscience

Fires have burned 3 percent of Amazon rainforest in 12 years, NASA says

“Scientists find that hard-to-track fires in forest ‘understory’ have done even greater damage to rainforest than traditional deforestation.”

via kqedscience

Frozach Submitted

via iraffiruse

James Balog; Chasing Ice

via marine-science

(via understandingtheuniverse)

Cave Data: Borneo Stalagmites Provide New View of Abrupt Climate Events Over 100,000 Years

• by John Toon

“A new set of long-term climate records based on cave stalagmites collected from tropical Borneo shows that the western tropical Pacific responded very differently than other regions of the globe to abrupt climate change events. The 100,000-year climate record adds to data on past climate events, and may help scientists assess models designed to predict how the Earth’s climate will respond in the future.

The new record resulted from oxygen isotope analysis of more than 1,700 calcium carbonate samples taken from four stalagmites found in three different northern Borneo caves. The results suggest that climate feedbacks within the tropical regions may amplify and prolong abrupt climate change events that were first discovered in the North Atlantic.

The results were published June 6 in Science Express, the electronic advance online publication of the journal Science, and will appear later in an issue of printed publication. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation.

Today, relatively subtle changes in the tropical Pacific’s ocean and atmosphere have profound effects on global climate. However, there are few records of past climate changes in this key region that have the length, resolution and age controls needed to reveal the area’s response to abrupt climate change events.

“This is a new record from a very important area of the world,” said Kim Cobb, an associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “This record will provide a new piece of the puzzle from the tropical Pacific showing us how that climate system has responded to forcing events over the past 100,000 years.”

Among the findings were some surprises that show just how complicated the Earth’s climate system can be. While the stalagmite record reflected responses to abrupt changes known as Heinrich events, another major type of event – known as Dansgaard-Oeschger excursions – left no evidence in the Borneo stalagmites. Both types of abrupt climate change events are prominently featured in a previously-published stalagmite climate record from China – which is only slightly north of Borneo” (Continue Reading).

(Source: Georgia Tech)

via theolduvaigorge

Carl Sagan: A Message To Humanity

A wonderful video compilation of some of Carl’s most powerful and chillingly [still] relevant words. Introduce someone to Carl Sagan today and utilize this video. These are prophetic words from a human being who truly “spoke for Earth”.

Stay Curious. Watch and share the Sagan Series by Reid Gower; change someone’s life today.