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Why the New Sea Level Alarm Can’t Be Ignored
Posted by National Geographic: Robert Kunzig on April 1st, 2016
National Geographic: There are days when even a born optimist starts to waver in his conviction. The release of a new study projecting that sea level could rise between five and six feet by 2100-when many children born today will still be alive and have been forced to move inland-made Thursday one of those days.
There have been lots of other studies, you might say. True: The last sea-level alarm (in what seems an endless series) came just a month ago. That analysis showed that in the 20th century, sea level rose faster...
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Tornadoes and Global Warming: Is There a Connection?
Posted by National Geographic: Robert Kunzig on May 22nd, 2013
National Geographic: It sounds intuitive: Of course global warming should lead to more-and more powerful-tornadoes.
We're adding energy to the atmosphere by trapping heat with greenhouse gases, and tornadoes are the very picture of terrifying atmospheric energy.
Linking any particular weather event to climate change is always tricky, because weather is inherently random. But weather patterns can speak to a warming planet. Scientists can detect that extreme rain events, for instance, are already happening more often...
Population 7 billion
Posted by National Geographic: Robert Kunzig on December 30th, 2010
National Geographic: One day in Delft in the fall of 1677, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, a cloth merchant who is said to have been the long-haired model for two paintings by Johannes Vermeer—“The Astronomer” and “The Geographer”—abruptly stopped what he was doing with his wife and rushed to his worktable. Cloth was Leeuwenhoek’s business but microscopy his passion. He’d had five children already by his first wife (though four had died in infancy), and fatherhood was not on his mind. “Before six beats of the pulse had intervened,”...