Author Archives: WallyBuffington

See the Moving Artwork Commemorating the Fall of the Berlin Wall 25 Years Ago

by WallyBuffington Posted on November 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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Today marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which for more than 28 years divided East and West Germany and became the defining symbol of the Cold War. On November 9, 1989, following a series of large protests that swept throughout Eastern Europe, East German officials hurriedly changed travel regulations to the West, for the first time allowing regular citizens to cross. The rules were supposed to take effect the next day, but East Germans swarmed the border stations and, as it became clear border guards were no longer willing to shoot, the gates were finally opened. Crowds from both sides began demolishing the wall, and for months Berlin resonated with the sound of people pecking away at the concrete.

A crowd celebrates atop the wall after realizing that guards have set their weapons down. Peter Kneffel/DPA/ZUMA

Running through a border crossing on November 10. DPA/ZUMA

A man celebrates atop the Wall. Before the border opening, anyone climbing it would have been shot and killed. More than 250 people died trying to cross. Scott A. Miller/ZUMA

A forlorn guard at the Brandenburg Gate. AP

DIY demolition. Scott A. Miller/ZUMA

AP

Official demolition of the Wall did not begin until 1990, but East German guards removed this section on November 12, 1989. Eberhard Kloeppel/DPA/ZUMA

Before the “anti-fascist rampart,” as the GDR government called it, went up, barbed wire and armed guards prevented people like this couple from fleeing to the West. AP/Edwin Reichert

To commemorate the anniversary this weekend, Berlin installed a “border of light” made up of 8,000 illuminated balloons tracing where the wall once stood.

AP/Markus Schreiber

AP/Markus Schreiber

AP/Kay Nietfeld

“Remembrance belongs to the people,” the installation’s creator, artist Marc Bauder, said. “We want to offer individual access instead of a central commemoration.” Tonight, exactly 25 years after the opening of the border was announced, the balloons will be released into the air.

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See the Moving Artwork Commemorating the Fall of the Berlin Wall 25 Years Ago

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Our Inability To Deal With Climate Change Is Going to Kill the Penguins

by WallyBuffington Posted on June 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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Move over, polar bears: It’s time for Emperor penguins to become the new poster children of climate change.

Recently, polar biologists at the University of Minnesota used satellite images of poop stains (scientists are nothing if not resourceful) to show that some colonies of Emperor penguins in Antarctica are uprooting historic nesting sites, possibly to escape warming temperatures.

Courtesy Stephanie Jenouvrier

Today, a new study in Nature makes an even more grim prognostication about the future of the species: Thanks to declining concentrations of sea ice, two-thirds of Antarctica’s Emperor penguin colonies could lose more than half their population by 2100. Across the entire species, that translates to a 19 percent drop. Some colonies are larger than others, so a 50 percent decline in one group might be only a few individuals, while the same change in a larger group could be hundreds.

Less sea ice makes it more difficult to access krill, the tiny shrimp-like crustaceans that are the penguins’ primary food source, said study co-author Julienne Stroeve, a researcher at the National Snow & Ice Data Center. “Then, there are these large mortality rates for the penguins.”

So just how many penguins are we talking about here? A satellite survey in 2012 pegged the total head count at 595,000 across 45 colonies. A 19 percent decline would reduce the population to 481,950, or a loss of 113,050 adorable birds.

Scientists have long known that animals at the poles are especially vulnerable to global warming, which is happening in the Arctic and Antarctica faster than the rest of the world. In the Arctic, disappearing ice and rising temperatures are pushing species of whales, seals, and bears to hybridize, jeopardizing their genetic health. In Antarctica, earlier research has found that ocean warming could reduce the habitat available for krill by 20 percent, compounding the sea ice problem.

Earlier this year we explained the dangers that climate change pose for baby Puffins in the Gulf of Maine.

Today’s study is just the latest reminder of the vital role ice plays in the Antarctic ecosystem. And there’s little doubt that Antarctica’s ice is in serious trouble: Earlier this year a trove of research emerged indicating that one of the continent’s major ice sheets is already in irreversible decline.

The map below, from the study, shows which penguin populations are most at risk. The purple-to-white color gradient shows changes in mean sea ice concentration between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (it’s a bit counter-intuitive; purple is the least decline and white is the most). Each colored dot is a penguin colony, with the color indicating the colonies’ projected conservation status (see key below) by 2100. You can see that the most-threatened populations (red dots) are those nearest to the white space where sea ice has declined the most.

Courtesy Nature

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Our Inability To Deal With Climate Change Is Going to Kill the Penguins

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