Boris and Alfio, geologists at Sicily’s National Institute of Geophyscis and Volcanology picked us up in their four-wheel drive jeeps. Etna is a stunning image. She rises 3,300 meters right from the seafloor, towering over the towns located around her flanks, providing fertile land for farming and beautiful hiking and skiing. Alfio calls her their…
Columbia Water Center, The Asia Society and The Economist are cosponsoring the event Himalayan Glaciers and Asia’s Looming Water Crisis, Wednesday July 14, 2010, 6:30pm at the Asia Society.
Bill Gates funds cloud-whitening effort to reduce global warming. USA Today Bill Gates is funding research into whether or not it is effective and feasible to increase the albedo of atmospheric clouds by spray sea mist high into the atmosphere. The plan, spearheaded by Silicon Valley inventor Armand Neukermans, is a relatively benign method of…
Read here: http://www.adb.org/Media/articles/2010/13261-multi-currency-reserve-systems/
I recently took a trip to the Gowanus neighborhood in Brooklyn to visit its infamously polluted (and smelly) canal. After decades of controversy, the Environmental Protection Agency recently named the canal as a Superfund site—one of the few such designations in an inner-urban area. In its report, the EPA found that the Gowanus Canal “has…
An earthquake with the following parameters has occurred: Time: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 at 17:41:42 UTC, 13:41:42 EDT (1:42 PM in NY) Location: 45.862 °N, 75.457 °W (Southern Ontario), approximately 53 KM (33 mi) NNE from Ottawa Depth: 18 km (11.2 mi) set by location program Magnitude: 5.0 Parameters are calculated by the National Earthquake…
Catastrophic, tragic, disastrous: these are all words that have been used to describe the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It is impossible to deny that these words apply – thick, goopy crude has already coated the beaches and estuaries of the Gulf, contaminating more than 120 miles of coastline. The spill is…
Italy has some of the most famous volcanoes in the world: Vesuvius, Stromboli, and Vulcano all lie in a chain along Italy’s western coast. Scientists have found that these volcanoes are all intricately linked to the subduction of the Ionian Sea beneath southern Italy, Calabria, and Sicily. An oceanic plate contains rocks that have a…
While the nation and the world morns the destruction of marine habitat and the deaths of an untold number of animals, birds, fish, and tiny organisms in the Gulf of Mexico, another battle is being waged, one in which people are desperately trying to find a way to eliminate one type of fish in an…