Seeing Global Warming: The North Pole Thaws

Recent imagery from ESA satellites reveal a thawing of ice around the North Pole so dramatic that a ship could have theoretically sailed from the Norwegian islands of Svalbard directly to the Pole. From the ESA press release:

Observing data from Envisat’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) instrument and the AMSR-E instrument aboard the EOS Aqua satellite, scientists were able to determine that around 5-10 percent of the Arctic’s perennial sea ice, which had survived the summer melt season, has been fragmented by late summer storms. The area between Spitzbergen, the North Pole and Severnaya Zemlya is confirmed by AMSR-E to have had much lower ice concentrations than witnessed during earlier years.

Via Slashdot

NASA’s Goals Delete Mention of Home Planet

Here's the article that Maggi emailed out to us this weekend: The following article was published in the New York Times yesterday - "NASA’s Goals Delete Mention of Home Planet" by Andy Revkin This is a topic that should be important to all ESSN members, so a discussion thread has been initiated on the ESSN website (http://www.earthsystemscholars.org). Please login and share your thoughts and insights on this matter.

I believe in America. I believe it exists. My gut tells me I live there.

A new study by National Geographic explains a lot about the state of the world: Most US young people can't find Iraq on map: study Reuters WASHINGTON - Most American young people can't find Iraq on a map, even though U.S. troops have been there for more than three years, according to a new geographic literacy study released on Tuesday. Other exciting facts: - Fewer than three in 10 think it important to know the locations of countries in the news. - While the outsourcing of jobs to India has been a major U.S. business story, 47 percent could not find the Indian subcontinent on a map of Asia. - While Israeli-Palestinian strife has been in the news for the entire lives of the respondents, 75 percent were unable to locate Israel on a map of the Middle East. - Half of respondents said it was "absolutely necessary" to know how to read a map, but a large percentage lacked basic practical map-reading skills. For example, most young people were able to locate a port city on a fictitious map, but one-third would have gone in the wrong direction in the event of an evacuation. There were some positive signs: young people who use two or more different online news sources show a greater knowledge of geography. Indeed, the full report is actually more interesting and complex than the widely circulated factoids, and good reading for those of us interested in education, outreach, and better map making -- see it here: http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/roper2006/pdf/RoperPoll2006.pdf And read about National Geographic's education program aimed at filling some of the gaps here: http://www.mywonderfulworld.org/ (you can even take the test yourself)

Bush-Interrpution?

In reply to Esther's posting a while back, there was an article published in the March Ed. of 'Geospatial Soultions' about the Bush Administration's budget reguest for 2007. Most of us could probably guess as to what the administration wants to spend it's/our money on, so, I guess the article isn't too insightful in that regard. Be that it may, it took me 10 min. or so to scan the article so I ask that somebody out there glance it over. Here's the PDF Spatial Programs Just for good humor, go ahead and post a comment as to what you think the Bush. Admin might spend it's money on next year. Go ahead and be creative... you know they always are.