| Southern California fire threatens historic Mount Wilson Observatory The so-called Station Fire, which now covers more than 120,000 southern California acres and is burning largely uncontained, continues to threaten the century-old Mount Wilson Observatory, home to astronomer Edwin Hubble at the time he made his landmark observations of the universe's expansion. The observatory is currently unmanned due to the fire threat and the attending smoke, but a webcam atop Mount Wilson's 150-foot solar tower has provided observatory managers and concerned observers with a view from the scene. At 12:55 P.M. (Eastern Daylight Time) the camera showed a great deal of smoke but no flames. [More] rss.sciam.com |
What Would Failure at Copenhagen Mean for Climate Change? This is the consequence of failure at Copenhagen: A marked shift in scientific effort from solving global warming to adapting to its consequences, a hodge-podge of uncoordinated local efforts to trim emissions - none of which deliver the necessary cuts - and an altered climate. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Is Water Vapor in the Stratosphere Slowing Global Warming? Earth's stratosphere is a cold, dry place, above the troposphere--the bottom layer of the atmosphere we breathe on a daily basis. Ruled by winds and hosting everything from bacteria to long-distance jet travel, about the only way that water gets into this high-altitude layer 10 kilometers above the Earth's surface is when it billows up from the humid tropics, rising from the troposphere via the atmospheric interface known as the tropopause. But since 2001 there has been less water vapor in a narrow, lower band of the stratosphere thanks to cooler temperatures in the tropopause, and that may just be holding back global warming at ground level, according to new research published online in Science on January 28. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Trailblazer’s Take on Limiting Vendors David Ferguson, the poet who won the right to sell in the streets in the early 1980s, has some sympathy for a proposal to limit vendors in some parks. nytimes.com |
Pop and Rock Listings A selected guide to folk, hip-hop, soul, R&B, rock, pop and other music performances in New York and the area. nytimes.com |