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Climate change is hitting plants and animals just as hard as us.
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scinerds: 100 Million to Die by 2030 If World Fails to Act on Climate More than 100 million people will die and global economic growth will be cut by 3.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030 if the world fails to tackle climate change, a report commissioned by 20 governments said on Wednesday. Nina Chestney As global average temperatures rise due to greenhouse gas emissions, the effects on the planet, such as melting ice caps, extreme weather, drought and rising sea levels, will threaten populations and livelihoods, said the report conducted by humanitarian organization DARA. It calculated that five million deaths occur each year from air pollution, hunger and disease as a result of climate change and carbon-intensive economies, and that toll would likely rise to six million a year by 2030 if current patterns of fossil fuel use continue. More than 90 percent of those deaths will occur in developing countries, said the report that calculated the human and economic impact of climate change on 184 countries in 2010 and 2030. It was commissioned by the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a partnership of 20 developing countries threatened by climate change. “A combined climate-carbon crisis is estimated to claim 100 million lives between now and the end of the next decade,” the report said. Full Article
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cwnl: Sunspot AR1402 Kicks Up More Solar Energy via SOHO/SpacweWeather Sunspot AR1402, the source of this week’s powerful M9-class solar flare, is acting up again. On Jan. 26th between 0100 UT and 0600 UT, a sequence of C-class magnetic eruptions around the active region hurled a bright coronal mass ejection over the sun’s north pole, shown here in a coronagraph image from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. The cloud is not heading toward Earth, at least not directly. This and future eruptions from AR1402 are unlikely to be geoeffective as the sunspot is turning away from our planet. By week’s end it will be on the far side of the sun, blasting its CMEs toward planets on the opposite side of the solar system.
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jtotheizzoe: Whoa. The SOHO satellite is being inundated with so much radiation right now that it looks like it’s in a snowstorm. Cursed coronal mass ejection! (via Spaceweather.com)
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scinerds: Satellite Spots Costa Concordia Shipwreck From SpaceArticle: space.com In the satellite image of the Costa Concordia ship wreck, the luxury cruise ship is visible through a scattered cloud layer, as it lies half-submerged off the coast of Giglio, Italy. The ocean liner hit a reef on Jan. 13 and tipped over. It was taken by an Earth-observation satellite on Jan. 17 operated by DigitalGlobe, a Colorado-based company that uses a constellation of spacecraft to take high-resolution images of Earth. The Costa Concordia was carrying about 3,200 passengers and a crew of 1,000 when it ran aground, according to news reports. The accident killed 11 people, with more than two dozen others still missing, the Associated Press reported today (Jan. 18). Rescue efforts were suspended today due to rough seas that apparently shifted the huge ship.
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scinerds: geologise: Quadrantid Meteor Shower 2012 peaks tonight.Photo above credit to: mikesastrophotos.com For anyone living in the Northern Hemisphere, tonight be sure to keeps yours eyes open for the Quadrantids, which will peak tonight at around 2-3 a.m. EST, Wednesday January 4th. This will be an amazing and short show, averaging with 100 meteors per hour (max). Named after an extinct constellation, Quadrans Muralis, it is not as well known like the other ones we hear about during the year, but this is a shower you will definitely want to stay up for! The Quadrantids will occur between the constellations Draco and Boötes, close to the tail of Ursa Major (Great Bear aka handle of The Big Dipper). Below is a diagram of where you will need to look: Constellation photo from jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk. And to add, if you are unable to see them in your area, check out the ustream from NASA. The camera is set up at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama. Video should be embedded below (it may not come up on the dashboard, but if you reblog or check from our Tumblr page, you shouldn’t have issue). If you do have trouble, just go to this link to watch on the ustream website. Enjoy guys!
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geologise: Saturday’s Lunar Eclipse Will Include ‘Impossible’ Sight(Photo by Images In The Backcountry on Flickr) This year’s second total lunar eclipse on Saturday (Dec. 10) will offer a rare chance to see a strange celestial sight traditionally thought impossible. For most places in the United States and Canada, there will be a chance to observe an unusual effect, one that celestial geometry seems to dictate can’t happen. The little-used name for this effect is a “selenelion” (or “selenehelion”) and occurs when both the sun and the eclipsed moon can be seen at the same time. But wait!  How is this possible? When we have a lunar eclipse, the sun, Earth and moon are in a geometrically straight line in space, with the Earth in the middle. So if the sun is above the horizon, the moon must be below the horizon and completely out of sight (or vice versa). And indeed, during a lunar eclipse, the sun and moon are exactly 180 degrees apart in the sky; so in a perfect alignment like this (a “syzygy”) such an observation would seem impossible.  But it is atmospheric refraction that makes a selenelion possible. Atmospheric refraction causes astronomical objects to appear higher in the sky than they are in reality. Read the full article from SPACE.com omg friends in the US go see this for me sdjfjsdk