Classrooms in Boston to Get Different Kind of World Map Walk into most any classroom, and you will see a large world map hanging somewhere on the wall. Teachers use maps for subjects like geography and social studies. In the United States and other countries, schoolchildren have long learned from one kind of world map. It is called the Mercator projection. John Kerry says climate change is a weapon of mass destruction During his time as president, George W. Bush’s foreign policy was driven largely by fear of terrorists and WMDs. Obama’s State Department seems at least equally worried about climate change. Secretary of State John Kerry gave a speech in climate-vulnerable Indonesia on Sunday during which he mocked climate deniers and compared the threat of global warming to terrorism and poverty.
Is Lovelock a Seer and World Catastrophe Inevitable? (Update) James Lovelock is now 94 years old and has been making predictions about climate change since the 1960s, most of which, alarmingly, have come true – he thinks we have twenty years before “global warming will hit the fan.” What’s his best advice? “Enjoy life while you can.” Not the most reassuring of verdicts for parents and grandparents concerned about the future generations, never mind their own brief strut and fret about the stage. So is Lovelock to be taken seriously, or is he just another doomsday prophet? Maps Have Been Lying To You Your Entire Life The truth is that every map tells a lie, but they don’t all lie about the same thing. For example, Mercator projection maps—one of the most common in use today—exaggerate regions far from the equator. The Goode homolosine projection (pictured below) shows continents that are sized appropriately to one another, but with many interruptions and distortions of distance.
800+ Persuasive Maps - And a Tool for Making Your Own About a week ago Open Culture published an article about Cornell University's Persuasive Cartography collection. I hadn't seen that collection before so I went down a rabbit hole looking at map after map for a good 45 minutes. Persuasive maps aren't maps that you would use to teach a classic geography lesson. That's because persuasive maps are maps that were created for the purpose of sending a message. In Cornell University's Persuasive Cartography collection you will find maps that were created to persuade and satirize. The maps in this collection date back as far as 1491 and up to 2012.
Why the Arctic is drunk right now Perhaps the best analogy yet for the insane cold weather now afflicting the U.S. came from science blogger Greg Laden, who created the viral image above. “Go home, Arctic,” it reads. “You’re drunk.” When it comes to the reason why the United States is currently experiencing life-threatening cold — with temperatures in the negative-20s in the upper Midwest, and wind chills much lower than that — that’s actually not so far from the truth. “It’s basically the jet stream on a drunken path going around the Northern Hemisphere,” explains Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis. Nowhere is safe, say scientists as extreme heat causes chaos in US and Canada Climate scientists have said nowhere is safe from the kind of extreme heat events that have hit the western US and Canada in recent days and urged governments to dramatically ramp up their efforts to tackle the escalating climate emergency. The devastating “heat dome” has caused temperatures to rise to almost 50C in Canada and has been linked to hundreds of deaths, melted power lines, buckled roads and wildfires. Experts say that as the climate crisis pushes global temperatures higher, all societies – from northern Siberia to Europe, Asia to Australia – must prepare for more extreme weather events. Sir David King, the former UK chief scientific adviser, said: “Nowhere is safe … who would have predicted a temperature of 48/49C in British Columbia?” King, who along with other leading scientists set up the Climate Crisis Advisory Group earlier this month, said scientists had been warning about extreme weather events for decades and now time was running out to take action.
Mobile vs. fixed-line phones: A map showing the countries with the most cell phones per capita Mobile-phone subscriptions now outnumber the fixed-line variety by nearly 2-to-1 in the United States. Nine in 10 Americans have a cell phone. Globally speaking, that's nothing—a handful of countries are nearing two mobiles per resident, and in many landline-deprived African nations, the mobile-to-fixed ratio tops 200-to-1. The map below—the first in the new Slate/New America Foundation Map of the Week series—details today's real digital divides. Maps Provide a Special View of American History When people use maps, they are usually seeking directions to a place they want to go. But Susan Schulten sees much more in maps, like history, culture and art. She shares some of those findings in her book, A History of America in 100 Maps. Schulten travels back in time, using maps of the past. Her book explores the hopes, dreams and fears of ordinary people dating back to before the United States came to be. “There is practically no area of American history where maps don’t sort of enrich our understanding," Schulten said.
Assessing the impact of climate change on a global scale Thirty research teams in 12 different countries have systematically compared state-of-the-art computer simulations of climate change impact to assess how climate change might influence global drought, water scarcity and river flooding in the future. What they found was: The frequency of drought may increase by more than 20 per cent in some regions.Without a reduction in global greenhouse-gas emissions, 40 per cent more people are likely to be at risk of absolute water scarcity.Increases in river flooding are expected in more than half of the areas investigated.Adverse climate change impacts can combine to create global 'hotspots' of climate change impacts. Dr Simon Gosling from the School of Geography at The University of Nottingham co-authored four papers in this unique global collaboration. The results are published this week—Monday 16 December 2013—in a special feature of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). This in turn has an impact on water scarcity.
Climate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse Climate scientists have detected warning signs of the collapse of the Gulf Stream, one of the planet’s main potential tipping points. The research found “an almost complete loss of stability over the last century” of the currents that researchers call the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). The currents are already at their slowest point in at least 1,600 years, but the new analysis shows they may be nearing a shutdown. Such an event would have catastrophic consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America and West Africa; increasing storms and lowering temperatures in Europe; and pushing up the sea level off eastern North America.
Report on climate change depicts a planet in peril New York is among the coastal cities around the world that face a threat from… (Mark Lennihan / Associated…) Climate change will disrupt not only the natural world but also society, posing risks to the world's economy and the food and water supply and contributing to violent conflict, an international panel of scientists says. The warnings came in a report drafted by the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The 29-page summary, leaked and posted on a blog critical of the panel, has been distributed to governments around the world for review. It could change before it is released in March. "We see a wide range of impacts that have already occurred ... on people, ecosystems and economies," said Chris Field, a scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science and co-chairman of the group writing the report.