The first photograph of the entire globe: 50 years on, Blue Marble still inspires

December 7 marks the 50-year anniversary of the Blue Marble photograph. The crew of NASA’s Apollo 17 spacecraft – the last manned mission to the Moon – took a photograph of Earth and changed the way we visualised our planet forever.

Taken with a Hasselblad film camera, it was the first photograph taken of the whole round Earth and is believed to be the most reproduced image of all time. Up until this point, our view of ourselves had been disconnected and fragmented: there was no way to visualise the planet in its entirety.

The Apollo 17 crew were on their way to the moon when the photograph was captured at 29,000 kilometres (18,000 miles) from the Earth. It quickly became a symbol of harmony and unity.

The previous Apollo missions had taken photographs of the earth in part shadow. Earthrise shows a partial Earth, rising up from the moon’s surface.

…(read more).

See related:

• Charts, Books, Maps, & Prints: Imagining and Representing “The Other” on a Small Planet

Vice President Harris Delivers Remarks at the African and Diaspora Young Leaders Forum

The White House

Dec 13, 2022

Vice President Harris Delivers Remarks at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit’s African and Diaspora Young Leaders Forum.

Washington, DC

Global Warming in the Pipeline – James Hansen & Makiko Sato

13 December 2022

James Hansen and Makiko Sato

With 14 co-authors, we have submitted Global Warming in the Pipeline[1] to Oxford Open Climate Change. With permission of Editor-in-Chief Eelco Rohling, the submitted version is available on arXiv, the website used by physicists for preprints. One merit of arXiv is that it permits discussion with the scientific community (in addition to official reviewers) analogous to but less formal than the procedure used by journals with a “Discussion” publication phase. Thus, we invite criticism of the submitted paper. We do not invite media discussion; we will write a summary appropriate for the public at the time a final version of the paper is published. This approach allows time to work on a second paper. Also, now that it’s clear what President Biden is willing to do (and not do) about climate change, it’s time for JEH to finally finish Sophie’s Planet.

We were spurred to write this paper in part by papers of Tierney et al.[2] and Seltzer et al.,[3] which made a persuasive case that global temperature during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, ~20,000 years ago) was about 6°C colder than the Holocene. Forty years ago, we realized[4] that the LGM cooling had to be greater than the 3.5°C estimated by the CLIMAP project, because the CLIMAP surface conditions left Earth out of energy balance by 1.6 W/m2 – and that was without realizing that CH4 and N2O were less during the LGM. The CLIMAP boundary conditions left a planet trying to cool off with a (negative) forcing half as large as doubled CO2 (2×CO2) forcing. The Tierney and Seltzer papers resolve the matter: the LGM really was cold.

One implication is that equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is high, at least ~4°C for 2×CO2. That ECS refers to the climate response including only “fast” feedbacks. Human-made greenhouse gas (GHG) climate forcing today is 4 W/m2, equivalent to 2×CO2. Eventual climate response to this forcing, including slow feedbacks, is ~10°C (Fig. 1). Human-made aerosols reduce this to ~6-7°C.

We were initially surprised by the quick decrease of Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI) after CO2 was doubled in climate simulations of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) global climate models (GCMs) – [in production of acronyms, we seem
to be relentless, merciless]. In the first year after CO2 is doubled, the initial 4 W/m2 forcing is already reduced by one-third in the GISS (2020) model (Fig. 2a). The e-folding time for the global temperature increase is about a century, yet the e-folding time for EEI is as short as a decade for this newer GISS model.

…(read more).

Star Collapses into NEW Black Hole | BioFuel | Growing Robots

National Science Foundation Started streaming 7 minutes ago

#blackhole #space #science #scienceandtechnology #robot #robotics A massive star runs out of fuel and collapses into a new black hole while researchers work to create biofuel from waste, and a new kind of robotics can grow like a plant.

The problem with rice no one is talking about

DW Planet A Dec 9, 2022

Half the world eats it. One-fifth of our calories come from it. But rice has a dark secret: It pumps pollutants into the air and is vulnerable to extreme weather. So how can we grow rice better? Credits Reporter: Ajit Niranjan Camera: Florian Mettke Video Editor: Nils Reinecke Supervising editor: Joanna Gottschalk, Michael Trobridge, Kiyo Dörrer We’re destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn’t need to be this way. Our new channel Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world — and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we’ll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess. #PlanetA #Rice #Climate Read more:

Rice emissions per kilogram of food: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s…

Total rice industry emissions: https://www.nature.com/articles/s4301…

Alternate wetting and drying: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science…
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science…
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/12/5/1510 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas…

Biochar: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science…

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction

00:47 Background
02:30 Draining fields

05:49 Burning waste
08:06 Growing less
10:14 Conclusion

See related:

• The Greenhouse Gas No One’s Talking About: Nitrous Oxide on Farms, Explained | Civil Eats
• BBC World Service – The Climate Question, Can we feed the world without using chemical fertilisers?
• Global Balliol – T. C. Weiskel
• Balliol Notes, Balliol College, Oxford
• The Malthus Insight and the Global Limits of “Green Revolution” Food Production
• The “Green Revolution:” Its Essence, Achievements & Aftermath
  • How Could Something So Right Turn Out Wrong? How Could Something So Good Go Bad? The Tragic Story of the Modern World’s Love Affair with The “Green Revolution” – Part 1
  • The Rise and Forthcoming Demise of Petro-Intensive Agriculture – Some Elements of The Scientific Critique – Part 2
  • The Mythology of the Green Revolution – Part 3
  • Alternatives to “Green Revolution” Technology for Long-Term Agricultural Sustainability & Survival – Part 4
• Some Troubling Chapters in The Political Ecology & History of West African Agriculture
• Dr. Vandana Shiva: The importance of Soil Regeneration | Soil Food Web School
• The Agribusiness Alliance for a Green Revolution Failed Africa – Tim Wise (GDAE-Tufts University & IATP)

Food-matters,

Musk’s attack on Fauci is ‘dangerous,’ White House says

Reuters – Dec 13, 2022

Billionaire Elon Musk’s public condemnation of top U.S. health official Anthony Fauci is ‘dangerous’ and ‘disgusting,’ White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.

The Heat Is On: Bjorn Lomborg on the Summer’s Record Heat

Hoover Institution Sep 22, 2022

The summer of 2022 saw record temperatures recorded all over the world. Bjorn Lomborg acknowledges that climate change is here, it’s real, and humans are largely responsible for it. He also says that it is survivable and manageable. In other words, climate change is not the extinction-level event it is often characterized as. Lomborg also discusses practical ways to lower our carbon footprint and emissions, pointing out why “carbon free by 2050” probably isn’t achievable and why we should make no massive changes to our economies or lifestyles to achieve it.

For further information:
https://www.hoover.org/publications/u…

For further information: https://www.hoover.org/publications/u…

Back to Zero: Sorting the World’s Waste Problem

World Economic Forum Streamed live 113 minutes ago

In India, like the rest of the world, trash and plastic waste is a huge problem: 200,000 tons of it are produced every day and much of this ends up in landfill. How can we solve this problem, not just in India, but in countries all around the world?

Nivedha RM, a member of the UpLink community of innovators, has a solution. Join us for the premiere and screening of the short film, ‘Back to Zero: Sorting the World’s Waste Problem’, which tells the story of Nivedha and her pioneering trash-sorting company, Trashcon.

In the film, we learn more about Nivedha’s journey and how she went from studying chemical engineering in Bengaluru to the creation of Trashbot, the world’s first completely automated waste segregator. It’s an incredible story of persistence, tenacity, collaboration, and hope.

The session will include a Q&A with Nivedha, as well as the producer and director of the film HyoJin Park about the film, and the issue of plastic waste in India.

Co-founded by partners across the public and private sectors, the Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP) harnesses the convening power of the World Economic Forum to bring together governments, businesses and civil society to translate commitments into meaningful action – at both the global and national levels.

Learn more about GPAP at: https://www.globalplasticaction.org/home

#plasticaction #gpap
License
Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)

Learn more about GPAP at: https://www.globalplasticaction.org/home #plasticaction #gpap

License

Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)

Volcanic evolution of the Pacific Northwest: 55 million year history

IRIS Earthquake Science– Aug 15, 2017

OSU/IRIS Collaboration–Pacific Northwest Earth-science series.
Tectonics of the Pacific Northest yield a varied volcanic history. The Pacific Northwest boasts an active volcanic arc (Cascades Range), a nearby ocean ridge (Pacific Plate-Juan de Fuca Plate spreading ridge), the world’s youngest flood basalt province (Columbia River Basalt), a hot-spot chain of eastward-younging volcanoes (Yellowstone Trend), volcanism related to continental extension, and more. It is a volcanological wonderland. The western margin of North America has long been dominated by subduction and dextral transtension. This animation attempts to simplify a complex tectonic interaction through cross sections.

This animation was created to accompany a Plenary talk at the 2017 IAVCEI meeting in Portland, OR.
Written and directed by Anita Grunder, Oregon State University
Graphics, animation, & narration by Jenda Johnson,Earth Sciences Animated
Reviewed by Ray Wells, U.S. Geological Survey

This Earthquake Drowned the Pacific Northwest

NOVA PBS Official – Jul 6, 2017

This earthquake drowned the Pacific Northwest long ago—and there’s still evidence of it today. Find out more in “Making North America: Human”: http://to.pbs.org/2tNUffc PRODUCTION CREDITS Digital Producer Saad Amer Animation Edgeworx Studios, LLC Fluid Pictures Poster Image Earthquake Animation ©WGBH Educational Foundation 2017