Crew Commentary Author
New High-Res Images from NASA
tsedevino • 01.07.2016
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) recently captured a unique view of Earth from the spacecraft’s vantage point in orbit around the moon.
“The image is simply stunning,” said Noah Petro, Deputy Project Scientist for LRO at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The image of the Earth evokes the famous ‘Blue Marble’ image taken by Astronaut Harrison Schmitt during Apollo 17, 43 years ago, which also showed Africa prominently in the picture.”
The Most Eco Friendly College in the World
tsedevino • 01.04.2016
Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, may be a small school at 1,400 students, but it’s making huge leaps and bounds in sustainability. The school will soon be home to a living building and will be the only college generating all of its electricity from solar energy.
Aura mission tracks global pollutant trends
tsedevino • 01.03.2016
The success of clean air legislation in western developed countries is evident in the results from a 10-year study by a US space agency satellite.
The Aura mission has been tracking trends in emissions of nitrogen dioxide since its launch in 2004. It has seen big falls in the pollutant in the US and Europe, while at the same time recording significant increases in some developing nations, such as China.
There is More Plastic in Our Oceans Than We Thought
tsedevino • 12.27.2015
The 5 Gyres Institute co-authored this study which is the most comprehensive estimate of small plastics in the world’s oceans. There were two other papers published earlier, one by Cozar (2014) and Eriksen (2014) using separate data sets.
The paper published last week in Environmental Research Letters, A Global Inventory of Small Floating Plastic Debris, uses three ocean models and every dataset published since the 1970s. With 10 authors contributing to it, it’s the best so far. This new study suggests there are 15 to 51 trillion microplastic particles in the world’s oceans, weighing somewhere between 93 and 236,000 metric tons. This is roughly seven times more than what we thought before.
Why Are We Being Fed By A Poison Expert? by The Undercurrent
tsedevino • 12.23.2015
Why Are We Being Fed By A Poison Expert? by The Undercurrent
Ending Global Warming Denial
tsedevino • 12.22.2015
After 195 countries agreed in Paris Dec. 12 to a sweeping agreement to try to bring global warming under control, there has been much analysis of what this means for the future of energy. But there are reasons to think that it also may have a surprising impact on the future of politics, even in the U.S. — namely, by taking away some of the motivations and dynamics that, for so long, have driven global warming skepticism, doubt and denial.
Leonardo DiCaprio Speaks at Paris Climate Talks
tsedevino • 12.17.2015
Leonardo DiCaprio delivered a powerful speech Friday at the Climate Summit for Local Leaders at City Hall in Paris, a side event of COP21. The event was hosted by Mayor Anne Hidalgo of Paris and former mayor of New York City and the United Nations secretary general’s special envoy for cities and climate change Michael R. Bloomberg. Mayors from Los Angeles, Berlin, Madrid, Johannesburg and other major cities around the world gathered to discuss their role in mitigating climate change.
The First Completely Recyclable Biopolymer
tsedevino • 12.15.2015
Each year, around 10-20 million tons of plastic finds its way in to the Earth’s oceans, in total an estimated 5.25 trillion plastic fragments, weighing 268,940 tons. This plastic remains results in an estimated loss of $13 billion each year from damage that is done to the oceans ecosystem.
Nations Come to an Agreement on Climate Change
tsedevino • 12.14.2015
Representatives of 195 nations reached a landmark accord that will, for the first time, commit nearly every country to lowering planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions to help stave off the most drastic effects of climate change.
The Authors
David Houle
David Houle is a futurist, strategist and speaker. Houle spent more than 20 years in media and entertainment. He worked at NBC, CBS, and was part of the senior executive team that created and launched MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1 and CNN Headline News.
Houle has won a number of awards. He won two Emmys, the prestigious George Foster Peabody award, and the Heartland award for “Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream”. He was also nominated for an Academy Award. He is the Futurist in Residence at the Ringling College of Art+ Design.
He has delivered some 700 speeches on six continents and thirteen countries. He is often called “the CEOs’ Futurist” having spoken to or advised 3,500+ CEOs and business owners in the past eight years.
Houle coined the phrase the Shift Age and has written extensively about the future and the future of energy. This is his seventh book.
His primary web site is www.davidhoule.com
Tim Rumage
Tim Rumage is a planetary ethicist and naturalist. Taking an interdisciplinary and systems thinking approach to education, he has been teaching at the intersection of Science, Ecology, Art, Design and Architecture for more than 30 years.
Tim is the Coordinator/Developer of Environmental Studies at Ringling College of Art and Design where he teaches courses on environmental science, sustainability, creating ecological cities, applied environmental design, food, water, biodiversity and environmental ethics. He is also a Coordinator for Sustainability in Design Education for CUMULUS and a frequent lecturer at other colleges and for community organizations.
As a trained field biologist, Tim has done research on Marine Mammals, Pelagic Birds, Bats, Habitat Restoration and Land Planning. He has been involved in a variety of interdisciplinary projects in the US and Africa involving habitat restoration and protection, green infrastructure, local food production and sustainability. Tim’s current work focuses on the economic value of nature and nature’s services.
His primary web site is http://planetaryethicist.com/
