tagged w/ Earth and Science
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Most people use their laptops for work and Web browsing. Now you can add one more task to that list: earthquake detection.
From the recent early-morning 4.4-magnitude jostle in Los Angeles to February's magnitude 8.8 disaster in Chile, ordinary laptops are increasingly acting as miniature seismic stations. They're part of a volunteer army known as the Quake-Catcher Network, which takes advantage of built-in accelerometers in newer laptops to transmit data about earthquakes to researchers at UC Riverside and Stanford University.
About 1,000 people from 61 countries have signed up so far. If the network gets large enough, researchers say, it could act as a low-cost earthquake warning system.
http://www.livescience.com/technology/laptop-earthquake-detectors-100323.htmlMost people use their laptops for work and Web browsing. Now you can add one more task... more
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Volcano erupts in Iceland, hundreds evacuated-
REYKJAVIK, Iceland – A volcano erupted near a glacier in southern Iceland, shooting ash and molten lava into the air and forcing the evacuation Sunday of hundreds of people from nearby villages.
There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, but a state of emergency was declared and scientists feared the eruption could trigger a larger and potentially more dangerous eruption at the Katla volcano.
Saturday's eruption, which occurred just before midnight (2000 EDT, 8 p.m. EDT), came weeks after a series of small earthquakes. Television footage showed lava flows along the fissure.
"This was a rather small and peaceful eruption but we are concerned that it could trigger an eruption at the nearby Katla volcano, a vicious volcano that could cause both local and global damage," said Pall Einarsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland's Institute of Earth Science.
Authorities evacuated 450 people between the farming village of Hvolsvollur and the fishing village of Vik, some 100 miles (160 kilometers) southeast of the capital, Reykjavik, said Vidir Reynisson of the Icelandic Civil Protection Department.
Evacuation centers were set up near the town of Hella. The most immediate threat was to livestock because of the caustic gases.
"We had to leave all our animals behind," Elin Ragnarsdottir, a 47-year-old farmer, told RUV, Iceland's national broadcaster from an evacuation center. "We got a call and a text message ... and we just went."
Iceland sits on a large volcanic hot spot in the Atlantic's mid-oceanic ridge. Volcanic eruptions, common throughout Iceland's history, are often triggered by seismic activity when the Earth's plates move and when magma from deep underground pushes its way to the surface.
Scientists in Iceland have been monitoring the recent activity using seismometers and global positioning instruments. Like earthquakes, however, it is difficult to predict the exact timing of eruptions.
More---
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100321/ap_on_sc/eu_iceland_volcanoVolcano erupts in Iceland, hundreds evacuated-
REYKJAVIK, Iceland – A volcano... more
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Tectonic is a sound sculpture created in real time by earthquakes as they occur across the globe. A tightly integrated system between Max/MSP, Google Earth and Ableton Live processes a stream of real-time data that is translated into synthesis and sample playback parameters.
When an earthquake occurs, seismic data is relayed to the system, sound is produced and Google Earth immediately flies to the coordinates of the latest earthquake giving us a visual representation of the newest developments. As multiple earthquakes occur daily, the sculpture builds, enmeshing itself in a complex soundscape of textures and tones - every second, different from the last and never repeating the same stage twice.
http://vimeo.com/9861812Tectonic is a sound sculpture created in real time by earthquakes as they occur across... more
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Across western North America, from Mexico to Alaska, forest die-off is occurring on an extraordinary scale, unprecedented in at least the last century-and-a-half - and perhaps much longer. All told, the Rocky Mountains in Canada and the United States have seen nearly 70,000 square miles of forest - an area the size of Washington state - die since 2000. For the most part, this massive die-off is being caused by outbreaks of tree-killing insects, from the ips beetle in the Southwest that has killed pinyon pine, to the spruce beetle, fir beetle, and the major pest - the mountain pine beetle - that has hammered forests in the north.
These large-scale forest deaths from beetle infestations are likely a symptom of a bigger problem, according to scientists: warming temperatures and increased stress, due to a changing climate. Although western North America has been hardest hit by insect infestations, sizeable areas of forest in Australia, Russia, France, and other countries have experienced die-offs, most of which appears to have been caused by drought, high temperatures, or both.
One recent study collected reports of large-scale forest mortality from around the world. Often, forest death is patchy, and research is difficult because of the large areas involved. But the paper, recently published in Forest Ecology and Management, reported that in a 20,000-square-mile savanna in Australia, nearly a third of the trees were dead.Across western North America, from Mexico to Alaska, forest die-off is occurring on an... more
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jkw077
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3 years ago
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From Wikipedia:
The Northeast Blackout of 2003 was a massive widespread power outage that occurred throughout parts of the Northeastern and Midwestern United States and Ontario, Canada on Thursday, August 14, 2003, at approximately 4:15 p.m. EDT (UTC-04). At the time, it was the second most widespread electrical blackout in history, after the 1999 Southern Brazil blackout.[1][2] The blackout affected an estimated 10 million people in Ontario and 45 million people in eight U.S. states.
From: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/23oct_superstorm.htm
A 1994 solar storm caused major malfunctions to two communications satellites, disrupting newspaper, network television and nationwide radio service throughout Canada. Other storms have affected systems ranging from cell phone service and TV signals to GPS systems and electrical power grids. In March 1989, a solar storm much less intense than the perfect space storm of 1859 caused the Hydro-Quebec (Canada) power grid to go down for over nine hours, and the resulting damages and loss in revenue were estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.From Wikipedia:
The Northeast Blackout of 2003 was a massive widespread power... more
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jkw077
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3 years ago
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Lake Haramaya, set in terraced hills roughly 300 miles east of Addis Ababa, is an extreme case. Around the world, many lakes that people have relied upon for centuries are shrinking. But Lake Haramaya is no longer shrinking. It is gone. The old lake bed, now dry and cracked, is an empty, shallow crater, pocked with patches of dusty, sunburned grass.
The lake was a victim of converging forces that read like a nightmare laundry list of 21st century environmental ills: erosion, population increases, wasteful farming practices, government mismanagement and climate change.
In Central Asia, the freshwater Aral Sea was almost completely drained by Soviet mismanagement. Lake Chad in central Africa has been shrinking for decades because of overuse and continuous droughts. In the United States, the water level in Lake Superior in Michigan and Lake Okeechobee in Florida has reached record lows.
Now Harar gets by on water drawn from what remains of an underground pool beneath Lake Haramaya’s bone-dry basin as it awaits completion of a new system that will pipe water from 30 miles away.
But the new system will not provide water for the region’s farms. Some farmers have found water by drilling into Lake Haramaya’s dry basin. But they have had to buy pumps. Farmers without extra money have watched their crops suffer. Most of the fishermen have moved to another shrinking lake over the next range of rolling hills.
Climate Change is not only a future series of events. Climate Change is NOW!!!!! Faith is needed NOW!!! Action must be taken NOW!!!! Learn how to live off the land, how to use fewer resources, how to love one another and all others NOW!!!! New Orleans, Aceh, Haiti, Chile, are only the start of what is to come...Lake Haramaya, set in terraced hills roughly 300 miles east of Addis Ababa, is an... more
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jkw077
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A rock slide that punched gaping holes in a bridge and left huge boulders on Interstate 70, forcing a 17-mile stretch of the western Colorado highway to be closed indefinitely, has prompted the governor to declare a disaster emergency Monday.
About 20 boulders tumbled onto I-70 in Glenwood Canyon at about midnight Sunday. No injuries or damage to vehicles were reported, but the slide left holes as large as 10 feet by 20 feet in a bridge-like elevated section of roadway.
About 20 boulders, ranging from three to ten feet long, were scattered on the highway, with the largest weighing 66 tons, officials said.
All lanes were closed from Glenwood Springs east to the town of Dotsero.
I-70 is a vital east-west link in Colorado. The state's Department of Transportation has no estimate of when it will reopen.
Up to 25,000 vehicles a day travel that section of the major east-west artery, department spokeswoman Stacey Stegman said.
Because of the rugged terrain, the shortest detour is more than 200 miles.A rock slide that punched gaping holes in a bridge and left huge boulders on... more
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jkw077
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According to Alan Thorpe, from the new-scientist the evidence are to clear to doubt the reality of global warming...
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527490.100-theres-no-war-to-fight-over-global-warming.html
WHAT is it like being a climate scientist at the moment? Not much fun. It's a bit like your next-door neighbour being accused of a crime and everyone in the city you live in, including yourself, being told they are under suspicion as well. Accusations about lack of integrity, deceit and bias are flying thick and fast.
To most climate scientists, these accusations seem deeply unfair: mistakes may have been made, but it is wrong to condemn the whole of climate science as incompetent, corrupt or worse.
Do climate scientists have a cause, or a battle to win, as some of our critics seem to imply? I don't think so. I am not an environmentalist but rather an environmental scientist. The distinction is crucial: science is about the accumulation of knowledge, not fighting causes.
Journalists often say that scientists should go on the offensive to win the battle on climate change, but I disagree. The only battle that scientists should try to win is for airtime, to be able to present and debate our knowledge with society at large. We must ensure that this knowledge is available for others - policy-makers and the public - to decide what actions to take, but it is not the climate scientists' role to comment on what policy decisions should be taken.
The scientific method is also being questioned. Some say the funders of climate research only support work that sets out to prove that global warming is caused by humans. And peer review, as a means of quality control for proposals and findings, has been criticised as merely a way of giving the nod to those in the clique and keeping out those who are not.
But take a look at the facts. Competition for research funding is fierce. For example, my organisation, the UK's Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), supports less than a quarter of proposals submitted to it. And science by its nature is questioning and sceptical. These factors are reflected in the highly critical way in which scientists review each other's research proposals, probing and vigorously challenging assumptions. To minimise the potential for group-think or bias among reviewers, we cast the net as widely as possible. Our decision-making panels do not have fixed membership but vary from year to year.
Peer review of research findings is similarly rigorous and sceptical. The system is not perfect, but it's the best one we have.
What of the research itself? One way to think of climate science is as an attempt to test the hypothesis that the warming we have observed over the past 50 years and more is caused mainly by greenhouse gases dumped into the atmosphere by humans. This hypothesis was formulated because is has been known since the 19th century that certain gases in the atmosphere warm the climate, and that humans have been adding more of these gases into the atmosphere.
Climate scientists have been trying to find evidence that would disprove this hypothesis for the past 40 years or more. So far they have failed.
We still do not discount the possibility that the hypothesis is wrong. There are other ways in which the climate can warm over such a period of time. This is why scientists are trying to assess the significance of all the ways in which the observed global warming could be occurring. I cannot stress enough that scepticism and challenge of this kind are fundamental aspects of the way that climate science is carried out.
It is incumbent on those who claim that the science is flawed to bring forward a body of peer-reviewed evidence that shows the hypothesis is false. So far they have failed to do so. I don't think that it exists.
Of course, our understanding of climate change still has many uncertainties in it, but we're not covering them up. Scientists have made huge advances developing rigorous ways to not only predict how that climate will change, but also to estimate the size of the uncertainty in that prediction. It is not easy to communicate why the uncertainty is there and how big it is, and we have to get much better at that. But research continues to reduce uncertainty, including new NERC programmes on glaciers, ocean circulation and acidification, the water cycle and the role of the biosphere.
Perhaps the most astonishing allegation we face is that climate science is a grand conspiracy of thousands of scientists in many countries. I am absolutely convinced that it is not. I don't think you could organise one on this scale amongst scientists, even if you wanted to.
I don't think you could organise a conspiracy on such a scale, even if you wanted to
Like it or not, the weight of evidence is such that we must conclude that human activity is almost certainly the cause of the recent global warming. It would be perverse to conclude otherwise.
Climate science will go on. No doubt mistakes will be made along the way; scientists are human beings with failings like anyone else. But society is surely able to factor this into its assessment of climate science without throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Alan Thorpe is head of the Natural Environment Research Council, which funds much of the UK's climate science. He is a meteorologist with 30 years' research experienceAccording to Alan Thorpe, from the new-scientist the evidence are to clear to doubt... more
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In the wake of simply not being satisfied with how the certain groups are going in giving attention and adequate focus to the truly important environmental news and crises we face, I have created the group, Earth Care. This is a description of what the group will be about:
"This group will be posting environmental news that doesn't get the attention it deserves on other groups. This will not be a group about green "fads" or "trends" but the meat of the environmental issues and crises that must see the light of day. Climate Change (no denier propaganda), Earth Science, environmental tech, and anything to do with longterm environmental effects on our planet and our future will be discussed here along with action items. This group truly believes in Earth Care."
And I absolutely want to see viewer created content in this group. So please consider joining Earth Care and giving attention to the important issues that slip into the abyss in other environmental groups that must please corporate sponsors. I will delineate more as the group hopefully gets going.
Thanks, and thanks for caring for our Earth!In the wake of simply not being satisfied with how the certain groups are going in... more
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Behold the most accurate, detailed true color view of our own planet ever constructed. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center used satellite data to stitch together detailed scans of every square kilometer of the planet.
http://io9.com/5484889/most-detailed-image-of-our-planet-ever-createdBehold the most accurate, detailed true color view of our own planet ever constructed.... more
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"JPL research scientist Richard Gross computed how Earth's rotation should have changed as a result of the Feb. 27 quake. Using a complex model, he and fellow scientists came up with a preliminary calculation that the quake should have shortened the length of an Earth day by about 1.26 microseconds (a microsecond is one millionth of a second).
Perhaps more impressive is how much the quake shifted Earth's axis. Gross calculates the quake should have moved Earth's figure axis (the axis about which Earth's mass is balanced) by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters, or 3 inches). Earth's figure axis is not the same as its north-south axis; they are offset by about 10 meters (about 33 feet).
By comparison, Gross said the same model estimated the 2004 magnitude 9.1 Sumatran earthquake should have shortened the length of day by 6.8 microseconds and shifted Earth's axis by 2.32 milliarcseconds (about 7 centimeters, or 2.76 inches).
Gross said that even though the Chilean earthquake is much smaller than the Sumatran quake, it is predicted to have changed the position of the figure axis by a bit more for two reasons. First, unlike the 2004 Sumatran earthquake, which was located near the equator, the 2010 Chilean earthquake was located in Earth's mid-latitudes, which makes it more effective in shifting Earth's figure axis. Second, the fault responsible for the 2010 Chiliean earthquake dips into Earth at a slightly steeper angle than does the fault responsible for the 2004 Sumatran earthquake. This makes the Chile fault more effective in moving Earth's mass vertically and hence more effective in shifting Earth's figure axis.
Gross said the Chile predictions will likely change as data on the quake are further refined. ""JPL research scientist Richard Gross computed how Earth's rotation should... more
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This is also happening in the Arctic... so much so, that it is said to account in part for the massive loss of perennial ice in the Arctic that took place in 2007. The Arctic is the canary in the coalmine regarding climate change/global warming, not a few inches of snow in Dc. It is simply ignorant to say global warming does not exist based on snow falling outside your window without looking beyond it. Sea ice extent in the Arctic is refreezing at a much slower rate; pereninial thicker ice is disappearing, thus giving way to thinner ice which then allows the water below the surface to warm, thus causing faster melting, thus causing less sun to be reflected back, thus also affecting the ocean conveyor belt which could be partly responsible for the cold weather and snowfall being experienced in Europe and on the Eastern seaboard. To see this now happening in Antarctica should indeed make us aware of the message this is bringing. Also, in the summer of 2003, France also had a heatwave that killed over 30,000 people. EXTREMES in temperature are a harbinger of climate change, and they are now much more prevalent. It isn't hard too see the reality and connect the dots. But of course, those with an ideological agenda or who are paid to have one will never admit to the reality of what is now going on. Those of us who do must get beyond the rhetoric now. The ice caps will not wait.This is also happening in the Arctic... so much so, that it is said to account in part... more
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"Our oceans are a chemical soup..."
We are ruining our whole planet in a way most people have never thought of...
Just watch the first 3 mins of the video in the link....you will see how bad plastic among other pollutants, really is..."Our oceans are a chemical soup..."
We are ruining our whole planet in a... more
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This little video boggled my mind, mostly because it is so precisely imagined. What would our sky look like, asks artist Roy Prol, if the rings of Saturn got transferred to Earth?This little video boggled my mind, mostly because it is so precisely imagined. What... more
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The plastic forks and spoons we eat with are not recyclable, so what happens to all of these discarded utensils? They end up in our landfills, beaches, and oceans. Americans toss out enough plastic spoons, knives, and forks each year to circle the equator 300 times. Wanton wastefulness doesn’t stop with our flatware of course. According to the EPA, the United States produces approximately 220 million tons of garbage each year, the equivalent of burying more than 82,000 football fields six feet deep in compacted garbage. The National Recycling Coalition reports that, on average, every American throws away more than seven pounds of garbage a day.
With increased awareness of global warming, more and more people are realizing that long-term consequences can outweigh temporary convenience. After all, the average plastic fork is only used for three minutes before it’s thrown away. Three minutes of usefulness leads to 10,000 years in a landfill or a swirling eternity in an ocean gyre.
The situation is far from palatable, which is why Stephanie Bernstein founded To-Go Ware. Her Berkeley-based company makes bamboo utensil sets and stainless steel food tins to help reduce our reliance on oil and to cut down the amount of garbage we produce everyday. By eating your lunch out of a tiffin—a stackable metal tin that resembles a chromed vertical farm—you eliminate oil-based plastic containers along with the BPAs and phthalate toxins that can leach out of these soft plastics and into our food.
To-Go Ware chose to craft its utensils from bamboo because bamboo is a sustainable grass that “can grow from one to three feet in a single day. It is incredibly hardy and does not require fertilizers and pesticides to thrive. Unlike wood, it is nonporous and naturally antibacterial because of the seal of its cellular structure.”
To-Go Ware doesn’t just stop plastic utensils from going into landfills; it also recycles and repurposes discarded water bottles. With RPET, (Recycled PolyEThylene) the company uses a system that saves a plastic bottle from a landfill or incinerator and turns it into a durable carrying case for its bamboo utensils.
But what about those new compostable disposables? Why not just use all of those cups, containers and utensils that are made out of potato and cornstarch rather than plastic? Bernstein is skeptical about their positive impact. She concedes that they are indeed compostable, but only if the disposed utensils are returned to a commercial-grade composting center where they can be heated to at least 150 degrees. Bernstein is also leery about the companies like Monsanto who are championing these types of solutions.
For Current Green's interview with the founder of To Go ware, head on over to: http://blogs.current.com/green/2009/09/01/current-green-says-yes-to-to-go-ware-and-no-to-the-destruction-of-25-million-trees-each-year/The plastic forks and spoons we eat with are not recyclable, so what happens to all of... more
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leahl
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added this
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3 years ago
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And so the green movement is being marketed to men.
Or so Audi pretends in their Superbowl ad for their TDI Diesel (which can be converted to a biodiesel if you have a station in your home town).
Ya know, I like that Audi makes TDI’s. I do.
I hate this ad.
While on the surface it almost looks like a PSA that educates about the basic environmental practices in re: to plastics, battery recycling, composting, styrofoam and water usage; after viewing it I walked away with the odd association of feeling constricted and constrained by doing all of those small daily practices for the environment. What’s up with police state over monitoring my every move? (At least I would have gotten a laugh if they had broken in on a sex seen for some un-green sex practices…that’s SuperBowl Sunday appropriate, no?)
Frankly, I walked away with an anti-green feeling and irritation towards anyone between me and my ability to do the basic little things I enjoy in life (like eating, and grocery shopping, and hot-tubbing). Look Audi, go ahead and make your cars, but don’t go and F up all the work that so many environmental organizations have been developing to promote and educate that small changes in every day life can be easy to do and can make a difference.
The need for liberation and freedom imprinted in men’s DNA (this we have been taught via car commercials) was finally accomplished by breaking out of the line and driving the open road in Audi’s “green” car. Awesome. So this wasn’t about being green, this was just about a need for speed, and escape from the entrapment of family (perhaps I’m being harsh, perhaps this is really a pro-marriage ad….maybe the real underlying message is If you only had a woman to deal with all of those domestic chores you wouldn’t get stuck in silly entrapments, hence you would ultimately have more opportunity to roam the open road…)
Bah. Enough over analyzing. It’s kind of sad that I feel the need to dig deep into this ad to find some underlying messaging. But I offer this act of mindsturbation as a favor to Audi; otherwise all that would be left to say is, 'hey look, there goes Audi greenwashing' (c’mon guys, driving a car is just plain wasteful and harmful to the environment). So do us a favor, stick to selling your cars via the messaging about freedom and liberation that comes with having a car. Leave the environmental messaging to people who..well…care.
Believe me, we’ll respect you for it in the morning.And so the green movement is being marketed to men.
Or so Audi pretends in their... more
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leahl
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3 years ago
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