science, yeah?

stuff is cool

[whitepeopletwitter]

[capitanplanet]

Mt Ijen volcanic Lake, Indonesia

[egberts]

the flat earth society bought a $20,000 super accurate laser gyroscope to prove the earth doesn’t rotate 15 degrees per hour and they kept getting results that proved it does so they kept altering the test to try and make it not drift 15 degrees but it didn’t work so they just said “well we still don’t believe it and we have other stuff that proves it so whatever”

[20aliens-deactivated20200625]

[theauspolchronicles]

From the school strike outside Town Hall in Sydney. Look at all these amazing signs! Look at all these amazing people demanding a better future from our politicians! I’m so proud!

[drrockclub]

Layer cake stratigraphy.

Perfect example of layer cake stratigraphy, where sediments are deposited uniformly and undisturbed for millions of years.

Cliffs of the Point Perpendicular in eastern Australia

[eartharchives]

Barrier Reef sludge dump 'nail in coffin'

Australia agrees to discard of one million tonnes of waste in world's largest coral reef.

Despite strict laws on dumping waste, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) gave the go-ahead.

[ex0skeletal]

there’s no such thing as climate change by MrBonecracker

[nubbsgalore]

hammer time. schools of scalloped hammerhead sharks photographed in the galapagos by (click pic) alexander safanov, montgomery gilchrist, eric h cheng, norbert wu, franco banfi, todd aki, chris newbert and larry gatz.  

scalloped hammerhead populations have declined by over 95 percent in the past thirty years, largely due to the shark fin trade. this summer, scalloped hammerheads became the first species of shark to be protected by the u.s. endangered species act, one of the world’s strongest wildlife conservation laws. 

[nubbsgalore]

#EndangeredSpeciesDay

[sciencenewsforstudents]

Super-tiny pollutants may help fire up fierce storms

Tiny pollutant particles floating in air may help create clouds and wind, strengthening storms.

Teeny-tiny particles in the air can make storms stronger, new research suggests. This is especially true over places where the air starts out relatively clean, such as over the oceans or in the Amazon rainforest. A passing plume of the tiny pollutants in these places can make a storm up to 50 percent more intense.

That’s the conclusion of a new computer analysis.

The smaller an air pollutant particle is, the longer it can remain aloft in the air. And the longer it stays in the air, the farther it can travel. Such small particles are known as ultrafine (meaning super small) aerosols. Each will be less than 50 nanometers — billionths of a meter — across. (For perspective, a human hair may be 80,000 to 100,000 nanometers wide.)

Explainer: What is a computer model?

Such nanopollutants spew from a wide range of sources. These run the gamut from car exhaust and wildfires to printer toner. When inhaled, these tiny pollutants can cause harm to the body and brain. When drawn into the atmosphere, they can alter the weather.

Fairly large air-pollutant particles can help form clouds. But scientists used to think the ultrafines were too small to do that. New research suggests that’s wrong. Ultrafine aerosols indeed may help drive storms in the Amazon and elsewhere. That would mean they may play a big role in how water (the basis of storms) moves across the planet.

“I have studied aerosol interactions with storms for a decade,” says Jiwen Fan. She’s an atmospheric scientist who led the new study. She works at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. “This is the first time I’ve seen such a huge impact” from these tiniest particles, she says.

Her team shared its findings January 26 in Science.

[femmanist]

[straightboyfriend]

[davidessman]

earlier this month it was 120 degrees in Australia , but yeah lets continue to mock those trying to save us in the 12 years we have left to slow climate change’s effects. 

What is the worst thing that could happen if we listen to scientists and change our ways, and then it turns out they were lying? 

Slowly dying in a mad max hell world to own the libs I guess. 

[blueelectricangels]

this is literally why scientists stopped calling it “global warming” and started calling it “climate change”

because these dense motherfuckers couldn’t get it through their heads that an increase in the average global temperature is, has, and will lead to an increase in extreme weather events including goddamn polar vortexes.

“Fner ner ner, look at all the snow outside, what of your global warming now?? CHECK AND MATE SCIENTISTS so much for your fancy degrees and decades of research” of fucking course you’re still gonna get a winter you goddamn dingdongs! The Earth still has a fucking axial tilt – there is always going to be a portion of the year that is colder because that’s when you’re further away from the sun! 

(unless you live between the tropic of cancer and the tropic of capricorn, in which case you’re at more or less the same distance from the sun all year, but presumably then you aren’t pointing to snowfall as proof positive that scientists are spearheading a conspiracy to…i don’t even fucking know. reduce emissions? meanspiritedly destroy the fossil fuel industry, which is gentle and blameless and certainly has never been linked to enormous environmental disasters or long-term health concerns or…?)

[jungs-dirty-little-slut-deactiv]

Conservatives will be the fucking death of us

[humandisastersquad]

Also the reason for these extremely cold temperatures happening and doing so more often is directly a result of literal global warming. Due to rising temperatures (thanks to climate change caused by humans which is real and happening right now and fuck anyone who says otherwise), the Arctic sea ice has been melting more and more without replenishing itself during winter. To make matters worse, the more ice that melts, the more ocean is exposed, which absorbs (rather that reflecting like ice does) the sun’s energy, further heating up. 

This rise in polar temperatures is the reason the polar vortex is currently above the US and making Day After Tomorrow a reality

For those who don’t know, a polar vortex is an area of low pressure that likes to chill around the poles (both north and south but the north is more relevant here). These areas of cold, dense air are usually kept in check by jet streams: long, narrow, fast flowing air currents caused by two masses of air that are different in density/pressure/temperature etc. meeting. 

The polar jet streams in particular are caused by the meeting of cold, dense low pressure polar air and warm high pressure air from the tropics. It’s usually pretty strong, especially during winter, as the temperature gradient between the poles and the tropics is rather large. The bigger the difference, the stronger the wind, and the less likely that polar air escapes southwards.

However, due to the warming around the north pole thanks to the melting sea ice and warming oceans, this gradient is decreasing.

This results in a weaker polar jet stream, which allows the vortex to meander all over the place, such as down south into the US, bringing the cold dense air with it.

Please go forth and use this information to make sure the idiots using this cold snap as piss poor evidence that climate change isn’t real know that they’re wrong and they should feel bad. Also maybe tie them down and make them watch this video (which is where I got these gifs from) which is a good (but terrifying) explanation of how extreme weather events are becoming and will become more common as a result of anthropogenic climate change.

[auntiewanda]

And yet somehow these idiots don’t think parts of the USA literally being colder than the uninhabitable Antarctic is a crisis. 

[toastbutteregg]

@ big industries stop throwing your trash in the ocean

[realcleverscience]

MOOD

I would so fracking love a kickass Captain Planet reboot. And it’s gotta have an epic scene where the gang, along with AOC, Al Gore, and a few other climate heroes start walking toward the white house (where they’re of course holding a pro-coal and pro-oil meeting) while there are explosions in the background, and the kickass song starts playing, and everything moves in slow motion for a few seconds. y’all know what I’m talking about.

This is the movie we need right now!

p.s. bad-ass song for the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk-U8ruIQyA

[eighteenbelow]

A couple of fossil photos: at left, an ammonite, and there’s part of an ancient lobster on the right.

[kp777-deactivated20241106]

Global temperatures in 2018 fourth hottest on record, scientists confirm

World 1.5F hotter than average set between 1951 and 1980 as Noaa scientists warn the ‘impacts of long-term global warming are already being felt’

By Oliver Milman

TheGuardian

Feb. 6, 2019

From the article:

Global temperatures in 2018 were the fourth warmest on record, US government scientists have confirmed, adding to a stretch of five years that are now collectively the hottest period since modern measurements began.

The world in 2018 was 1.5F (0.83C) warmer than the average set between 1951 and 1980, said Nasa and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). This means 2018’s average global temperatures were the fourth warmest since 1880, placing it behind 2016, 2017 and 2015.

This follows a broader pattern of human-induced climate change, which is boosting increasingly punishing heatwaves, sea level rises and extreme weather. Last year saw a pair of devastating hurricanes hit the eastern US, while record wildfires ravaged California.

There was disastrous flooding in India, a huge typhoon in the Philippines and deadly wildfires in Greece and Sweden. The Arctic, which had its second warmest year on record, experienced temperature highs that astonished scientists.

“2018 is yet again an extremely warm year on top of a long-term global warming trend,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

“The impacts of long-term global warming are already being felt – in coastal flooding, heatwaves, intense precipitation and ecosystem change.”

Read more.