Category: Earth Science Education
Scientists may soon find out. Orbiting objects exert a gravitational pull on each other. This gravitational pull is what gives objects their weights; it’s the reason that you weigh 83% less on Earth’s moon than on Earth, without losing any of your mass. Scientists are currently using measurements of objects’ gravitational pulls to find new […]
Burning plant material in the Amazon rain forest can be good for the planet? Yes–provided it’s done in the right way. A scientist at Cornell University has discovered that the ancient practice of burning biomass underground, starved of oxygen. The process produces “terra preta” (also known as “black gold” and biochar)–a carbon-rich soil that helps […]
From xkcd: http://www.xkcd.com/164/ Science is about facts and evidence. There is a lot of evidence that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. You can explore with our models how carbon dioxide impacts the global temperature. Politics is about what to do about those facts. But politics too often turns into a blame game, in which […]
From xkcd: http://www.xkcd.com/402/ The permafrost line is shifting. It may be slow by tornado-chasing standards, but it’s shifting. A study earlier this year from Université Laval in Quebec City, Canada showed that the permafrost line has moved northward by 130 kilometers in the last 50 years. While climate change is the most probable explanation for the […]
Yes–if you’re a coral. Biologist Brent Constantz has formed a company to sequester carbon dioxide just as corals in the ocean do. The strategy is simple–combine carbon dioxide, water, and calcium. The carbon dioxide comes from the smokestacks of electrical power plants, and the water and calcium come from seawater. The material produced is used […]
In the fairy tale, Goldilocks was a little girl who walked into a house in the forest. She ate porridge, sat in chairs, and slept in beds. The first choices she tried were too hot, too big, and too hard. Her second choices were too cold, too big, and too soft. Her third choices were […]
From xkcd: http://xkcd.com/263/ Question: How can we trust ourselves (or scientists) to know the truth about anything? Answer: We look at the evidence. Scientists back up their claims with evidence. If the evidence doesn’t fit the claim, then the claim is rejected and revised. New evidence can result in changes to long-held understandings about how the […]
Pollution has its benefits. With fewer particulates being released by smokestacks and cars, there are fewer aerosols in the atmosphere. Fewer aerosols means that more solar radiation hits the ground. With more sunlight hitting the Earth, the Earth warms up–faster than many scientists had initially predicted. Calculations by Jan Magnus, Bertrand Melenberg, and Chris Muris, […]
Our Sun has bursts of activity that occur in an 11 year cycle–some periods of lots of activity and some periods of low activity. The Sun provides the radiation that heats the Earth and makes it habitable for us. So when the Sun is more active, the Earth should get warmer, right? Wrong. New research, […]
Climate scientists are working intently on models that can forecast what Earth’s climate might be like in the future. The evidence points towards a warmer future, thanks to increased greenhouse gas emissions from humans. So why are climate scientists studying the distant past (paleoclimate), long before humans roamed the planet? Well, it turns out that […]