Astronauts Snag Dramatic Photographs of Alaska’s Erupting Volcano
“Astronauts living on board the International Space Station managed to get these dramatic pictures of the Pavlof Volcano as it erupted over the weekend. The volcano began acting up last Monday, the 13th, its first eruption since 2007.”
See more images at The Atlantic.
Definitely click through!
We’re Screwed: 11,000 Years’ Worth of Climate Data Prove It
A study published in Science reconstructs global temperatures further back than ever before — a full 11,300 years. The new analysis finds that the only problem with Mann’s hockey stick was that its handle was about 9,000 years too short.
Read more. [Images: Science]
Some much needed inspiration.
A Manifesto for Living a Creative Life (Also, a Stunning Surf Video)
Mickey Smith’s Dark Side of the Lens is a meditation on his work as a surf photographer, passion, and doing what you love.
Stunning Photos of Lions in Kenya, Snapped via a Remote-Control Car
Will Burrard-Lucas, a wildlife photographer, built the armored “BeetleCam” so that his camera could get up close and personal with dangerous animals. The video “teaser” shows the contraption in action, and Burrard-Lucas shares many still images on his website.
Neat. Though the Michael Bay music is ridiculous.
Two years ago, I was driving some students from the UMass urban planning department to a town we’d never been before. I asked one of the students who was in the back seat to hand me the map that was in the pocket on the back of my seat. She looked at me and said, “Map?? OMG. You’re SSSOOO OLD!” I’ll never forget it.
Here is how maps were made in the ’40s.
A Vintage Look at ‘Modern Map Making’ in the 1940s
Caught Mapping, produced by Chevrolet in 1940, explores how road maps were made at the time. Courtesy of the Prelinger Archive.
Click through. Stunning photographs of recent wildfires in the southwest.
The sky turns a brilliant orange as smoke from the High Park Fire fills the sky near Laporte, Colorado, on June 10, 2012.
See more. [Image: Reuters]
The solutions in this piece in The Atantic by legal scholar Jonathan H. Adler are not entirely different from traditional climate fixes put forth by advocates and climate scientists.
First, the federal government should support technology inducement prizes to encourage the development of commercially viable low-carbon technologies. For reasons I explain in this paper, such prizes are likely to yield better results at lower cost than traditional government R&D funding or regulatory mandates that seek to spur innovation.
Second, the federal government should seek to identify and reduce barriers to the development and deployment of alternative technologies. Whatever the economic merits of the Cape Wind project, it is ridiculous that it could take over a decade for a project such as this to go through the state and federal permitting processes. This sort of regulatory environment discourages private investment in these technologies.
Third, I believe the United States should adopt a revenue-neutral carbon tax, much like that suggested by NASA’s James Hansen. Specifically, the federal government should impose a price on carbon that is fully rebated to taxpayers on a per capita basis. This would, in effect, shift the incidence of federal taxes away from income and labor and onto energy consumption and offset some of the potential regressivity of a carbon tax. For conservatives who have long supported shifting from an income tax to a sales or consumption tax, and oppose increasing the federal tax burden, this should be a no brainer. If fully rebated, there is no need to worry about whether the government will put the resulting revenues to good use, but the tax would provide a significant incentive to reduce carbon energy use. Further, a carbon tax would be more transparent and less vulnerable to rent-seeking and special interest mischief than equivalent cap-and-trade schemes and would also be easier to account for within the global trading system. All this means a revenue-neutral carbon tax could be easier to enact than cap-and-trade. And as for a broader theoretical justification, if the global atmosphere is a global commons owned by us all, why should not those who use this commons to dispose of their carbon emissions pay a user fee to compensate those who are affected.
Fourth and finally, it is important to recognize that some degree of warming is already hard-wired into the system. This means that some degree of adaptation will be necessary. Yet as above, recognizing the reality of global warming need not justify increased federal control over the private economy. There are many market-oriented steps that can, and should, be taken to increase the country’s ability to adapt to climate change including, as I’ve argued here and here, increased reliance upon water markets, particularly in the western United States where the effects of climate change on water supplies are likely to be most severe.
Read the piece at The Atlantic
The Spring of 2012 Is the Hottest in U.S. History
In case, you know, you haven’t been outside in the past three month, it’s about to become official: unless a freak blizzard blankets the country by Thursday, the spring of 2012 will go down as the warmest for the U.S. in 117 years of record-keeping. The National Climatic Data Center won’t release a report on the temperatures in May until sometime in June, but based on their assessment of March and April, University of Maryland professor Steve Scolnik, who blogs at Climate Capital, says that our warm May will smash the 102-year-old record.
Read more at The Atlantic Wire. [Image: Dino Grandoni]
1) Men cut ice from Kissena Lake in Queens, ca. 1860-1900.
2) New York Fire Department demonstration of a steam pumper converted from horse-drawn to motor-driven, at 12th Avenue and 56th Street.
The New York City Municipal Archives just released a database of over 870,000 photos from its collection of more than 2.2 million images of New York throughout the 20th century. Their subjects include daily life, construction, crime, city business, aerial photographs, and more.
More beauties at InFocus
Witness the death of American liberalism. Aging coastal states will be overwhelmed by conservative ideology very soon. Good luck America!
U.S. Teen Birthrates Are Down, But Still High in the Bible Belt
Teen birthrates are highest in Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, and New Mexico, with slightly lower concentrations in the neighboring states of Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Arizona. New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and Massachusetts have the lowest rates of teen births.
What factors lie behind this geographic pattern? […]
Teenage births remain high in more religious states. The correlation between teenage birthrates and the percentage of adults who say they are “very religious” is considerable (.69). The 2009 study posited that attitudes toward contraception play a significant role, noting that “religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself.”
Teen birthrates also hew closely to America’s political divide. They are substantially higher in conservative states that voted for McCain in 2008 (with a correlation of .65) and negatively correlated with states that voted for Obama (-.62).
Class plays a substantial role as well. Teen births are negatively associated with average state income (-.62), the share of the workforce in knowledge, professional, and creative class jobs (-.61), and especially with the share of adults who are college graduates (-.76). Conversely, teen birthrates are higher in more working class states (with a positive correlation of .58).
Read more at The Atlantic Cities.[Image: Centers for Disease Control]
(via theatlantic)
Manifesto. noun, a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives…
Lecture. noun, (1.) An exposition of a given subject delivered before an audience or a class, as for the purpose of instruction. (2.) An earnest admonition or reproof; a reprimand.
There’s much ado by arm-chair critics media consumers regarding Maura Kelly’s Slow Book Manifesto in today’s The Atlantic. Why? Mostly because some were offended by this quote, “Read books. As often as you can. Mostly classics.” And more than a few have commented that Kelly’s intent is to lecture the public on what they should be reading. And that her “Manifesto” is actually an ivory-tower lecture. They then go on to call her names, but mostly settle on calling her a “snob.”
The critics consumers didn’t read her post, nor grasped her point (nor do they - as I would have - attempt to dismantle her supporting evidence).
Kelly argues that she should read more fiction. Not just classics, per se. Why? First, because it’s cognitively beneficial. The brain needs nutrition in order to function well. Second, because fiction contextualizes culture. Without fiction, a nation has no history, no culture, no options for good mental health. And third, because media, such as TV, are not making people happy. Books are one way that reliably makes people happier, and have better lives.
She doesn’t try to jamb classics down anyone’s throats. Not even close. If sci-fi is your thing, read more of it! Harry Potter? Go for it, man.
Her point is to read more books and get away from ‘byte-sized’ media. And her so-called critics media consumers could learn a lesson in that…
</rant>
I want to punch climate change in the face.
A blog about the interactions between the built environment, people, and nature.
I'm a climate change consultant specializing in climate adaptation, environmental law, and urban planning based in the U.S. In addition to traveling and hiking, I research, publish, and lecture on how cities can adapt to climate change.
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![Click through. Stunning photographs of recent wildfires in the southwest.
theatlantic:
In Focus: Western Wildfires
The sky turns a brilliant orange as smoke from the High Park Fire fills the sky near Laporte, Colorado, on June 10, 2012.
See more. [Image: Reuters]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5u15vo2jI1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
![theatlantic:
The Spring of 2012 Is the Hottest in U.S. History
In case, you know, you haven’t been outside in the past three month, it’s about to become official: unless a freak blizzard blankets the country by Thursday, the spring of 2012 will go down as the warmest for the U.S. in 117 years of record-keeping. The National Climatic Data Center won’t release a report on the temperatures in May until sometime in June, but based on their assessment of March and April, University of Maryland professor Steve Scolnik, who blogs at Climate Capital, says that our warm May will smash the 102-year-old record.
Read more at The Atlantic Wire. [Image: Dino Grandoni]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4sy2g5zhc1qcokc4o1_500.png)
![Witness the death of American liberalism. Aging coastal states will be overwhelmed by conservative ideology very soon. Good luck America!
U.S. Teen Birthrates Are Down, But Still High in the Bible Belt
Teen birthrates are highest in Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, and New Mexico, with slightly lower concentrations in the neighboring states of Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Arizona. New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and Massachusetts have the lowest rates of teen births.
What factors lie behind this geographic pattern? […]
Teenage births remain high in more religious states. The correlation between teenage birthrates and the percentage of adults who say they are “very religious” is considerable (.69). The 2009 study posited that attitudes toward contraception play a significant role, noting that “religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself.”
Teen birthrates also hew closely to America’s political divide. They are substantially higher in conservative states that voted for McCain in 2008 (with a correlation of .65) and negatively correlated with states that voted for Obama (-.62).
Class plays a substantial role as well. Teen births are negatively associated with average state income (-.62), the share of the workforce in knowledge, professional, and creative class jobs (-.61), and especially with the share of adults who are college graduates (-.76). Conversely, teen birthrates are higher in more working class states (with a positive correlation of .58).
Read more at The Atlantic Cities.[Image: Centers for Disease Control]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2krlvhhPH1qcokc4o1_500.png)
