Taxonomy term

Voices

Comment: Why is it so hard to teach climate change?

Someday, today’s young people may amass enough momentum to take action on climate change, but will they have the knowledge to do so?
01 Oct 2018

Geologic Column: "Collect Rocks Day" offers opportunity for inspiration

Introduce someone to rock collecting on Sept. 16: National Collect Rocks Day. 

16 Sep 2018

Comment: Out of bounds: Rethinking U.S. flood risk delineation

The 100-year floodplain — the area of land projected to be covered by water during a flood event that has a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year — has become the primary mechanism for determining flood insurance premiums and conveying flood risk, but perhaps it shouldn’t be.

04 Sep 2018

Comment: Leveraging physical oceanography in exoplanet exploration

Some exoplanets may host oceans, which are key to life on Earth. It’s time for astronomers who assess the potential habitability of other worlds to tap oceanographers’ knowledge of our own planet’s oceans.
03 Aug 2018

Geologic Column: The raw and the cooked

A humorous take on some paleoanthropological aspects of fire.

23 Jul 2018

Comment: The changing shape of local climates

Climate is changing globally, but how will it be experienced locally? Researchers are developing the techniques needed to understand and predict the local consequences of global change.

02 Jul 2018

Geologic Column: Tarnish on the Golden State

After World War II, California's economy and population boomed. Today, the state's economy is the fifth largest in the world, but unreasonably high living costs and numerous natural threats cloud its rosy image as the paradise by the Pacific.

22 Jun 2018

"Dam levels critical" in Cape Town

At first glance, a visitor to Cape Town might not notice the extent of the parched conditions — people still go about their business, amid the same kind of hustle and bustle you would find in other major cities. But looking closer, there are signs that something is not right. People standing in buckets to conserve water during showers is one such sign, and bottled water flying off grocery store shelves is another.

13 Jun 2018

Comment: Could NASA find evidence of extraterrestrial life by 2050?

Two upcoming missions will provide the first systematic approach to searching the atmospheres of exoplanets for signs of life — and they could find it in the next several decades.

04 Jun 2018

Cape Town faces a waterless future

The city of Cape Town, South Africa, is bone dry. In 2017, after two straight years of drought, a third drought year offered more of the same.. This past January, city leaders announced that they would shut off the taps to the municipal water supply in April because that was when “Day Zero” — the day when the water supply would run dry — was predicted to occur. Day Zero has since been pushed back to sometime in 2019, but, for 4 million Capetonians, living under the specter of a day without water is the new normal, and signs of that reality litter the city. Sometimes literally.

22 May 2018

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