Yaoundé, Cameroon
Bird of the Day: Double-toothed Barbet
Yaoundé, Cameroon
Antarctica Off The Bucket List
Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.
During my two years working in southern Chile I was close several times to going further south. In spite of my disappointment at the time, in hindsight I am fine with not having made the journey. Thank you, Sara Clemence, for getting that clear in my head:
Take Antarctica off your travel bucket list.
On the southernmost continent, you can see enormous stretches of wind-sculpted ice that seem carved from marble, and others that are smooth and green as emerald. You can see icebergs, whales, emperor penguins. Visitors have described the place as otherworldly, magical, and majestic. The light, Jon Krakauer has said, is so ravishing, “you get drugged by it.”
Travelers are drawn to Antarctica for what they can find there—the wildlife, the scenery, the sense of adventure—and for what they can’t: cars, buildings, cell towers. They talk about the overwhelming silence. The Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge called it “the quietest place I have ever been.” Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Caspian Stonechat
Oberpullendorf, Austria
Paris & Continuous Greening
Paris’ iconic zinc roofs can heat up to 194 degrees F on a hot summer day. JAN WOITAS / PICTURE-ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES
We have celebrated the many greening efforts made in Paris over the last decade, and today is a small but important addition to our knowledge of those commitments. Our thanks to Jeff Goodell in Yale e360:
A rendering of a rooftop terrace installed by the Parisian startup Roofscapes. ROOFSCAPES
Paris When It Sizzles: The City of Light Aims to Get Smart on Heat
With its zinc roofs and minimal tree cover, Paris was not built to handle the new era of extreme heat. Now, like other cities worldwide, it is looking at ways to adapt to rising temperatures — planting rooftop terraces, rethinking its pavements, and greening its boulevards.
The tree-lined Boulevard des Italiens is much cooler than nearby streets that lack trees. MBZT VIA WIKIPEDIA
There’s a long tradition in France of taking August off for holiday. Paris virtually shuts down as the temperature drifts around in the seventies, and people go to the beach or the mountains to cool off and relax. Think of it as an old‑fashioned adaptation to heat. People who stick around during August are often older or have jobs that require them to stay and keep the city functioning. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Northern Flicker
St. Louis, Missouri
Climate Optimism, Part 2
Hilary Swift for The New York Times
Bill McKibben’s occasional optimism notwithstanding, he and Al Gore are the two most visible alarmists on climate change. Even in the worst of circumstances both find reason to point out our remaining options for actually doing something.
Our thanks to David Gelles and the New York Times for rounding out the doom and gloom with a bit of hope:
Al Gore on Extreme Heat and the Fight Against Fossil Fuels
The past few weeks have him even more worried than usual.
It’s been 17 years since former Vice President Al Gore raised the alarm about climate change with his documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Since then, he’s been shouting from the rooftops about the risks of global warming more or less nonstop. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Spotted Forktail
Chaffi, Uttarakhand
Climate Optimism Part 1
Illustration by João Fazenda
Bill McKibben acknowledges in his most recent newsletter that in spite of all his efforts over the decades, he and we all are failing on climate change mitigation. But he has not given up hope:
A rapid end to burning fossil fuel would arrest the heating that has caused extreme damage in recent weeks; and that rapid end is possible.
In the list of ill-timed corporate announcements, historians may someday give pride of place to one made by Wael Sawan, the new C.E.O. of Shell, the largest energy company in Europe. In 2021, Shell said that it would reduce oil and gas production by one to two per cent a year up to 2030—a modest gesture in the direction of an energy transition. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Grey-Headed Woodpecker
male
Chopta, Uttarakhand
Why Are We Not More Afraid Of The Heat?
Jeff Goodell shares his opinion in the newspaper of record in the USA. It will serve as a preview of his book to the right, reviewed here. He has also spoken about this topic. There is no pleasure to be had here. Only awareness, and the question why we are not doing more:
In Texas, Dead Fish and Red-Faced Desperation Are Signs of Things to Come
In 2019, I happened to be visiting Phoenix on a 115-degree day. I had a meeting one afternoon about 10 blocks from the hotel where I was staying downtown. I gamely thought I’d brave the heat and walk to it. How bad could the heat really be? I grew up in California, not the Arctic. I thought I knew heat. I was wrong. After walking three blocks, I felt dizzy. After seven blocks, my heart was pounding. After 10 blocks, I thought I was a goner. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Blue-breasted Bee-eater
Sanaga River, Cameroon
Reviving Plants Lost To Time
A branch of Blutaparon rigidum, collected on a 1905-1906 expedition to the Galapagos Islands, contains hundreds of potentially viable seeds. NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN
We have touched on the topic of reviving extinct species only a few times previously, and as obvious as it seems we must mention that reviving plant species sounds like a more sound ambition. So, thanks to Janet Marinelli and Yale e360 for this story:
Back from the Dead: New Hope for Resurrecting Extinct Plants
Armed with new technology, botanists are proposing what was once thought impractical: reviving long-lost plant species by using seeds from dried specimens in collections. The challenges remain daunting, but researchers are now searching for the best de-extinction candidates.
In January 1769, botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander found a daisy in Tierra del Fuego, at the southern tip of South America. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: American Tree Sparrow
St. Louis, Missouri
Paint It Very White
Xiulin Ruan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, has created the whitest paint on record with his students. John Underwood/Purdue University
We once again have Cara Buckley to thank:
To Help Cool a Hot Planet, the Whitest of White Coats
Scientists at Purdue have created a white paint that, when applied, can reduce the surface temperature on a roof and cool the building beneath it.
Xiulin Ruan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, didn’t set out to make it into the Guinness World Records when he began trying to make a new type of paint. He had a loftier goal: to cool down buildings without torching the Earth. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Demoiselle Cranes
Khichan, Rajasthan
Stop Digging
A man cools off by a fountain during a heat wave in Seville, Spain, on July 10th. Photograph by Cristina Quicler / AFP / Getty
It is difficult to imagine, from where I sit in cool weather in the mountains of Costa Rica’s central valley, what that heat would feel like. But it is not difficult to imagine all the possibilities for doing something about it. When you are in a hole that you do not want to be in, stop digging:
Is It Hot Enough Yet for Politicians to Take Real Action?
The latest record temperatures are driving, again precisely as scientists have predicted, a cascading series of disasters around the world.
We’ve crushed so many temperature records recently—the hottest day ever measured by average global temperature, the hottest week, the hottest June, the highest ocean temperatures, the lowest sea-ice levels—that it would be easy to overlook a couple of additional data points from this past weekend. But they’re important, because they help illuminate not just the size of our predicament but the political weaknesses that make it so hard to confront. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Female – Photo credit: Nancy Buron
Pawtucket, Rhode Island
Anthropocene Representative Location
We now have a place to match to the name for our epoch:
The Human Age Has a New Symbol. It’s a Record of Bomb Tests and Fossil Fuels.
A scientific panel has picked Crawford Lake, Ontario, to represent the Anthropocene, a proposed, and hotly contested, new chapter in geologic time.
For almost 15 years, a panel of scholars has been chewing over a big question: Has our species transformed the planet so much that we have plunged it into a new interval of geologic time? Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Orange-cheeked Waxbill
Yaoundé, Cameroon
The Scale Of Conservation Needed To Mitigate The USA’s Carbon Footprint
Protected areas, outlined in yellow, in a swath of the Brazilian Amazon are richer in trees than are other areas. NASA
Thanks to Yale e360, a very simple way to put scale on the value of protected areas, and at the same time consider the carbon footprint of the country that emits the most:
World’s Protected Lands Are Safeguarding More Carbon Than the U.S. Emits in a Year
If left unguarded, many of the world’s protected lands would have likely been burned, logged, or otherwise degraded, unleashing huge sums of heat-trapping gas. Continue reading
Organikos 