Brian, Emily and Phil have all picked their favorite images from the set just released by the New Horizons Team (see the full gallery here), but I have to beg to differ in liking this one best. Two probes – Galileo and New Horizons – two gorgeous snapshots of Io, and an eight year gap between them, allowing us to look for changes on this unusually active moon.
It seems that the IPCC are not to keen on the idea of geo-engineering. This term covers a raft of proposed solutions to the problem of anthropogenic climate change, all based on the idea that as well as (and, in more extreme cases, rather than) reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we should instead start deliberately , rather than inadvertently, manipulating the climate. And despite the IPCC’s verdict (“Geo-engineering options… remain largely speculative and with the risk of unknown side effects…reliable cost estimates for these options have not been published.”), geo-engineering options are being seriously discussed in the peer-reviewed literature. Here’s a few of the ideas out there, in order of decreasing practicality (and sanity)*:
As I mentioned in my last post, a few boxes of my possessions are making their way out the South Africa the old-fashioned way, via cargo ship. I’ve obviously been coping without them, but it would be quite nice to have a few more clothes and CDs, and a lot of my notes, papers and textbooks; and when it comes to certain items, such as my coffee grinder and expresso machine, I’m starting to really wish I’d sacrificed some space in my checked baggage for them.
Anyway, I’ve been wondering where it’s all got to, since the ETA I was given was the middle of April. And I’ve discovered that as I knew the name of the ship, the internet once more provides the answer:
Stop your dawdling, Lars Maersk, and get ye to Durban!
My life has obviously changed a bit since my previous ‘day in the life’, and my first two months in South Africa have rather flown by without me really getting the chance to talk about how I’m finding it. What follows is my attempt to give you a flavour of my life so far in Jo’burg.
Charles Daney over at Science and Reason is so up-to-date with his summary the latest and greatest physical sciences blogging, he’s even summed up the blogospheric reaction to the discovery of Gliese 581b and c. Go check it out.