Wildfires. Bush fires. Droughts. Floods. Everything that scientists said would happen, is happening. And scarily, it’s faster and in cases more severe than the predictions. To further drive the point home, Extinction Rebellion launched an installation of sorts called Sinking House, where they literally floated a prop house down the Thames, right through the heart of London. The half-submerged home was the perfect analogy for our climate catastrophe, and was a tangible example of what rising sea levels will do to places all over the globe. Via MyModernMet:
Intense wildfires. Historic bush fires. Droughts. Floods. Everything that scientists said would happen, is happening.
It’s no secret that our oceans are in trouble. With the collapsing Great Barrier Reef, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and decades of pollution and overfishing, it’s a wonder that the oceans are alive at all. We MUST as a species start caring for our planet, if we want it to continue providing for us. In a collaboration for the Endangered Wildlife Project,Matt W. Moore has a series of brightly illustrated tropical fish, all of which are endangered.
The beautifully clean and colorful illustrations should capture our collective attention, so we can start thinking about earth’s creatures in a more protective light. Via Behance:
In these Earth & Science-centric infographics, artist Michael Paukner brings somewhat abstract phenomena to life. You can’t help but be stunned by the graphic on oldest trees. Via Gizmodo.
In a phenomenon that scientists still don’t quite understand, lightning is sometimes borne out of an active volcano when it erupts, with dramatic effect. On an island in southern Japan, one of Asia’s most active volcanos is providing an amazing show. Via FastCo Design:
National Geographic’s December issue is about the world’s biggest trees, and their team of photographers and explorers climbed many of the world’s largest trees to take size surveys, etc. Here they are in Sequoia National Park climbing “The President”, a 3200 year old ‘beaut that is most likely the largest tree in the world, by mass. To think that a living thing that has been around since well before the Romans and since early Egyptian days is, frankly, staggering.
[The App’s images] cover all corners of the globe, from the craggy outlines of the Susitna Glacier in Alaska to the Bogda Mountains in China, the latter of which showcase “purple mountain majesty” in a very literal sense. Alas, in the introduction to the collection, NASA notes that the image sensors on these satellite cams can “measure light outside the visible range, so the images show more than what is visible to the naked eye.” The images, we are reminded, “are intended for viewing enjoyment rather than scientific interpretation.”
I finally got around to seeing the film Chasing Ice last night, and I highly recommend going to see it. The film is a gripping and fiercely scary look at the world’s glaciers, and their rapid decline and disappearance. Renowned photographer James Balog spends years of his life and literally destroys his own knees hiking to some of the world’s most remote yet critical glaciers, setting up multi-year timelapse studies. His visual records of swift glacial decline are irrefutable proof of climate change in action. At the same time, he captures images of ice, icebergs and glaciers that are visually astounding. Painfully beautiful and just plain painful, the film is a must-see for anyone that wants to feel invigorated to do something about the climate crisis. Go see it.
In various artistic traditions, flowers have figured as ornament, allegory, and vehicles for exploring color, light, and technique. Substituted for the most fundamental themes — death, sex, the spiritual realm — they abound by virtue of their physical beauty and diversity, but also due to their symbolic implications, ritualistic and medicinal applications, and their proximity to decay.
Dispensing with romanticism and narrative associations, Andrew Zuckerman’s Flower is predicated on contemporizing this seemingly exhausted terrain. Culled from an exploration of over 300 species, Zuckerman aims, as always, to translate the essential nature of his subjects and unearth qualities that have previously escaped scrutiny.
With characteristic minimalism, he creates an atmosphere of absolute clarity to reveal each flower on its own terms. In the blank field of pure white light, in exacting definition, they appear alternately alien, comestible, and anatomical. Every aspect is made explicit. What one notices immediately are the astonishing gradations of color and variations of form — some sculptural, others almost viscous — followed by boundless textural nuance.
The images contained within are not still lives, but flowers in a specific time and place, responding to the pull of light, gravity, and water. At close range, they reveal a kind of topography for survival. Zuckerman’s photographs expose the mechanisms beneath the surface — vascular, respiratory, reproductive – the structural imperatives for such arresting physical beauty.
Some gorgeous aerial photography of Iceland’s volcanic landscape. The colors and patterns flow together to seem almost otherworldly. Photographs by Andre Ermolaev.
Iceland is a wonderful country; I would even say that it is a true paradise for all the photo shooting-lovers. But what has become a real discovery for me is the bird’s eye view of the rivers flowing along the black volcanic sand. It is an inexpressible combination of colors, lines, and patterns. The photo represents the mouth of the river falling into the ocean. […] A little bit upstream there is a yellow-colored brook flowing into the river, but yellow currents fail to mix with the main water flow. One can estimate the scale judging by the car tracks that are clearly seen on the black sand. This is just a river, just a volcano, just our planet.
In 2010, Alex Salmond, the First Minister of Scotland, announced that his government was aiming to power all of Scotland with 100% renewable energy by 2025. Just a few months later, they kicked it up a notch or five: Scotland would seek to run entirely on renewable power by 2020. Most of that would come from ambitious onshore and offshore wind farms, as well as some smaller wave and tidal power projects—and there are 7 GW of such clean energy projects already completed or underway.
2011 was an epic year for Scottish energy companies. The Department for Energy and Climate Change released figures recently demonstrating that the renewable energy sector saw more than £750 million of investment last year. Currently seven gigawatts (GW) of renewable projects are operational, under construction or approved … several projects are in the pipeline to eventually deliver 17 GW of power with an estimated investment of £46 billion … [Scotland] is already well on its way to hit its interim target of 31 percent.
Copyright by Moyan Brenn
And 2012 looks to continue that trend, especially as Salmond announced a new partnership with the United Arab Emirates, and Masdar, the Abu Dhabi clean energy company, today at the World Future Energy Summit. The two governments agreed to lay out an action plan this year that would allow them to pool resources and technology to accelerate cleantech development, initially focusing on offshore wind and carbon capture and sequestration.
Salmond acknowledged that one of the primary challenges to meeting the 2020 goal was finding ways to bring the costs of offshore wind projects down.
“The costs of offshore wind will have to be reduced by 20% to be competitive,” he said at a press conference today. Efforts to analyze and improve the supply chain will be a top priority, as will examining transmission challenges inherent in efficiently transporting electricity over long distances. Salmond repeatedly emphasized the need to commercialize offshore wind to make the technology available for wider deployment (and granting Scotland a foothold in one of the next generation’s most promising industries).
“The real prize is the technologies that we are refining together,” he said. “The result is to demonstrate the feasibility for deployment of those technologies around the world.”
By Flickr user David Shand
Other challenges to the burgeoning renewable sector are strictly political in nature: Salmond has been leading a push for Scottish independence, which has led the likes of Citigroup to warn investors of backing energy projects in the region. But Salmond dismissed such concerns today, asserting that there was great “strength in confidence in the renewable sector”, and pointed to a great potential for foreign investment.
Scotland’s push to become a leader in marine renewables (they’re also seeking to deploy as much as 2 GW of wave and tidal power) is not just laudable, but could prove visionary indeed. The effort could prove a major boon to Scotland’s economy, where wind could become a $30 billion dollar industry, according to forecasts from Scottish Enterprises. As such, it’s no surprise that the plan is raising high hopes in the renewable energy industry – and, no doubt, in Scotland.
An amazing collection of species from the future, changed irreparably due to climate change and the need to adapt to a new planet. Via Time:
In his “Engineered Species” project, part of his recently released book Past Forward, Fournier explores how life itself tinkers with its own design, changing DNA to make species better, faster and stronger. Fournier took pictures of taxidermy specimens—stuffed and pinned animals—and brought them to animal geneticists to find how these species were evolving in real time as the environment, thanks largely to human action, keeps changing.
PANGOLIN[Pholidota supraclimatis]
Climate change-tolerant mammal • Better adaptation to climate change (i.e. increase of 2∘C). Nocturnal/diurnal animals.
A high keratin content (DM content of 45%) maintains a constant body temperature and controls homeostatis. Claw composition: non-metallic and metallic (Ir) components [1:7] for animal defense.
BEETLE [Oryctes transmissionus]
Insect adapted to continuous tracking.
GPS receiver in the horn as integrated antenna. • Secretion of a two-layer ABS/Plexiglas material by the engineered animal. Accuracy of time signals (±10ns).
Head and thorax made with Al for short-wavelength transmissions in the ISM band from 2400-2480 MHz. Able to withstand accelerations of 12,000 g or about 118 km/s2. The L5 frequency band at 1.17645 GHz added. Animal for continuous tracking.
SPARROW [Passeridae megapixeliadeae]
Bird with high visual acuity
Injection around 20000 engineered stem cells per eye using isolate fibroblast precursors from corneal stroma.
Critical visual angle : 0.35 arc-minute. Large format camera : 180 degrees.Resolution of the bird eye : 576 megapixels. f/ratio = 22.3/7 = 3.2
Injection of a genetically modified gene isolated from camel hump cells in spores. Reservoir of fatty tissue derived from lipoblasts within cap.
Metabolized tissue with a yield of approx. 0.1 of H2O for each 0.1 g of fat converted through reaction with O2from the air.
Glass mirrors on scales providing parabolic reflectors. Very low f/#s. With a ray depth of 48.
Secretion of a thin layer of aluminium by reduction from tetrahydroxoaluminate Al(OH)4–to metallic aluminum by microbial-bacterial processes. Agro-infiltration of engineered bacteria with surfactant Silwet L-77. Body for mimetic camouflage.
GREAT GREY OWL [Strix nebulosa]
Predator-resistant feathers
Vision in pixels for delivering a fuller picture to the brain. Process of computer software memory. Engineered nerves cells and photoreceptor cells in the retina of the eye. Neither ears nor horns.
Embryogenesis modification. Tufts feather with a narrow band of wavelengths (305-320mm) to avoid predation. Claw composition: non-metallic and metallic (106Cd) components [1:5] for defense.
Tobias Revell: Power Generating Mushrooms in Mumbai
It took me a while to realize that this story of oversized mushrooms in Mumbai isn’t a reality. Yet. But it’s a fascinating look at the possible future of bio-engineering for the megacities that dot the earth. A 9-minute “documentary” was made that explains the story in detail.
‘New Mumbai’ by Tobias Revell Via DesignBoom: Tobias Revell, a British interaction designer, has documented the Dharavi slums of Mumbai, India, showcasing how genetically modified mushrooms have revitalized the poverty stricken city in the ‘New Mumbai’ of the future. Originally from Amsterdam, highly experimental biotechnological samples had been stolen from a dutch lab, where the fungi had been re-engineered to exponentially grow in size for use as narcotics and to create a micro-economy based off the material. As the new plant became introduced into the overpopulated but highly educated urban mass of the slums, the locals began to use it to their advantage – to both exercise freedom from the state and to provide suitable living conditions. today, the mushroom is used to harvest energy as well as provide providing heat, light and building material for the residents of the slums of Dharavi.
Harvesting of the mushroom on city buildings
harvesting energy from the mushroom on top of a building
Wired has a fascinating and tough look at the forest fires that have been raging in the west, all from the vantage point of space. Make sure to click on the images to see the devastation full size.
The scale of the fires burning in the Western United States this summer can be hard to fathom. But the view from space reveals the true extent of the devastation. Satellites have captured some sobering images of the fire, smoke and burn scars scattered across the Intermountain West.
While the fires in Colorado are dominating the news this week, blazes have also been raging in New Mexico, Utah and Arizona in June. Here are some of the scenes from space collected by NASA, NOAA and the U.S. Geological Survey this month.
Above:
This view from NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-15, on June 28 shows fires dotting the Rockies and sending smoke over huge swaths of the Midwest. Much of the smoke in this image is from blazes in Wyoming.
These images captured by the USGS’s Landsat 5 and 7 satellites show the Fort Collins area on June 8 before the fire (left) and on June 18 (right) after 60,000 acres and 189 homes had burned. As of June 29, the High Park fire had destroyed at least 259 homes and torched more than 87,000 acres. The burn scar shows up in dark red, active fires in bright red and smoke in light blue in these images taken by the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plusinstrument.Images: USGS
These images of the High Park fire near Fort Collins were captured by NASA’s Aquasatellite on June 9 (left) and June 10 (right). The approximate extent of the active fire is outlined in red. As of June 29, the High Park fire had destroyed at least 259 homes and torched more than 87,000 acres.
Images: NASA
These images of the Whitewater Baldy Fire in New Mexico were taken on June 5 by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1(EO-1) satellite. The false-color image (right) shows the massive burn scar in red and active fire in orange. By June 14, New Mexico’s largest fire ever had burned 290,000 acres. The natural color image (left) is a close-up of the area inside the white box in the image on the right.
Keystone XL remains a terribly flawed project, and one I think would push policy and energy strategy in North America is the absolute wrong direction. In an era of climate change, air pollution and ever-dwindling fossil fuels, we need to seek new directions, not double-down and get even deeper into the hole we’ve dug for ourselves.
Obviously, the Sierra Club agrees, and have produced a succinct video on the project. Perhaps if you have a friend or relative on the dirty end of the argument, you could point them in this direction.
It seems to me that this is a pretty amazing idea that could really work and clean the air pollution from urban areas (like parking lots, tested in the video above) and at the same time look good. That said, reducing is still better than restoring, but in the meantime- let’s get this lamp working!
