Tag Archives: coast

Hurricane Florence is no Hugo. It looks worse.

With winds of 125 mph and a span of hundreds of miles, Hurricane Florence is already one of the largest and strongest hurricanes ever to threaten the East Coast. The National Weather Service in Wilmington, North Carolina — near where Florence is expected to make landfall on Thursday — is already calling it “the storm of a lifetime.”

In this region, the current storm of anyone’s lifetime is 1989’s Hurricane Hugo — with winds of 140 mph, it was the most powerful hurricane to hit land north of Florida since weather records began in 1851.

Even though its winds won’t be quite as strong, Florence could be much worse by many other measures. Take a look at how they compare side-by-side from space (that’s Hugo on the left):

Grist / NOAA

Larger hurricanes typically bring much higher storm surges, historically the deadliest threat from hurricanes, because a larger span of winds can push more water ashore. Hugo’s storm surge peaked at around 20 feet near Moores Landing, South Carolina. Owing to North Carolina’s unique coastal geography, and with the extra nudge from the past 30 years of sea-level rise, Florence’s surge could top 20 feet.

Large, slow-moving hurricanes can also produce more rain. The latest warnings from the National Hurricane Center predict totals of up to 40 inches in isolated areas, far above the 27.84” that fell in Georgia during Hurricane Alberto in 1994 (the current East Coast record), or the 10.28 inches that fell in South Carolina during Hugo. Florence’s deluge will extend inland for hundreds of miles, which would flood virtually every river and stream in the Carolinas.

Worst of all, Florence will likely slide southward after reaching the shore, following the coastline and inflicting damage down to Charleston, S.C. or as far south as Savannah, Georgia. In contrast, Hugo’s landfall was relatively quick, weakening to a tropical storm in less than a day. Florence’s long coastal tour could take as long as two and a half days.

Stronger, rainier, and more damaging hurricanes have long been predicted as a consequence of climate change. Florence is the latest example. There are more to come.

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Hurricane Florence is no Hugo. It looks worse.

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The Secret Life of Lobsters – Trevor Corson

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The Secret Life of Lobsters
How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean
Trevor Corson

Genre: Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: October 13, 2009

Publisher: HarperCollins e-books

Seller: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS


In this intimate portrait of an island lobstering community and aneccentric band of renegade biologists, journalist Trevor Corson escorts the reader onto the slippery decks of fishing boats, through danger-filled scuba dives, and deep into the churning currents of the Gulf of Maine to learn about the secret undersea lives of lobsters. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

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The Secret Life of Lobsters – Trevor Corson

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7 Ways to Reduce Your Gas Consumption

When it comes to eco-friendly living tips, few things are as important as reducing your gas consumption overall. We’re talking about gasoline here?not to be confused with natural gas, another resource that bears consideration.

When it comes to using less gas, some tips are straight-forward and common-sense, while others require a little more creativity to pull off. Here are my top seven tips for reducing your gas consumption.

Live Near Your Work

If you’re currently renting or if you’re considering moving, make it a priority to relocate your home near where you work. Commuting is one of those things that many of us see as a necessary evil, but the shorter you make your commute, the better. Not only will you waste less gas, you’ll enjoy a higher quality of life. If you work in a big city, take public transit to get to work each day. Your reduction in transportation costs will likely even out the higher rent you’ll be paying.

Clean Out Your Car

Extra weight in your car means that it takes more gas to haul you and your personal belongings around. If you have a lot of junk in your trunk, store it somewhere else.

Carpool … There’s An App for That!

Carpooling remains a fantastic way to reduce gas consumption. Think about it this way: If everyone in the US commuted with just ONE other person, we’d be reducing the fuel consumption burned during rush hour by half! Carpool with friends, coworkers and family whenever possible. Don’t know anyone going to the same part of town as you? Download Carpool by Waze, a handy app that lets you connect with fellow carpoolers.

Use Cruise Control

When you’re on the highway, use cruise control. This will help you avoid choppy breaking and accelerating as much as possible. Your car probably knows how to coast better than you do, and setting your car to cruise control will help you save gas in the process.

Learn to Coast

When cruise control doesn’t seem like a viable, safe or convenient option, learn how to coast. While driving, consciously make an effort to avoid breaking unless its absolutely necessary. Instead, if you see a red light up ahead or a car slowing down in front of you, let your foot off the gas right away, giving yourself plenty of time to slow down without the break. By avoiding unnecessary breaking, you will help reduce your need to accelerate later and you’ll be saving gas by doing so.

Don’t Idle for more than 1 Minute

If you pull up to wait for a friend or to drop something in a mailbox, turn your car off if you believe you’ll be stationary for more than one minute. Idling burns gas with little to no return on investment.

Use the A/C on Low

You might think that opening your windows is a more eco-friendly option than using air conditioning, but that’s not necessarily the case. According to Cars Direct, having your windows open while driving reduces fuel efficiency by making your car less aerodynamic. If it’s cool outside, windows up and no A/C is the way to go. But if it’s hot outside and you need to keep things cool, roll up your windows and use A/C on a low setting.

Related Articles:

5 Ways to Make Your Car More Eco-Friendly
5 Ways Drivers Can Safely Share the Road With Cyclists
Why You Shouldn’t Drive in the Left Lane

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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7 Ways to Reduce Your Gas Consumption

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NOAA: Like 2017, 2018 will be a record year for floods

Thanks to global warming-induced sea-level rise, coastal waters are increasingly spilling into communities. In a report released Wednesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration quantified the extent of that inundation with some sobering statistics.

The bottom line: As a whole, the U.S. is experiencing more coastal flooding than ever.

NOAA

NOAA scientists analyzed data regarding high-tide flooding —defined as flooding that causes public inconveniences, like road closures — from nearly 100 coastal water-level gauges across the country in the past meteorological year (May 2017 through April 2018). Since 2000, the report says, parts of the U.S., primarily along the eastern seaboard, have experienced more than a 250-percent increase in yearly flooding.

“Due to sea level rise, the national average trend in high-tide flood frequency is now more than 50 percent higher than it was 20 years ago, and 100 percent higher than it was 30 years ago,” oceanographer and report author William Sweet said in a conference call with reporters.

And in the coming meteorological year, he said, “Records are expected to continue to be broken.”

NOAA

Here are the takeaways from Sweet and his colleagues’ findings:

2017 was a record-breaking year for flooding. More than 25 percent of coastline areas monitored either met or surpassed their record number of flood days.
National records were broken, too. Across the country, there were an average of six flood days at each gauge that NOAA monitored — that’s more than any previous year.
The northeast Atlantic and western Gulf of Mexico Coast regions were hit the hardest — Boston, Atlantic City, and Galveston, Texas, all broke flooding records and experienced some of the most flood days nationally.
Extreme weather played a role. Storms like Hurricane Irma and nor’easters that struck New England helped contribute to the upticks in water levels.
Notably, the official report does not implicate climate change — those words are not mentioned.
What’s on tap for 2018? You guessed it! More floods. The report predicts that in the 2018 meteorological year, there will be 60 percent more high-tide floods than at the start of the century — and possible mild El Niño conditions over the next year will likely play a role in that.

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NOAA: Like 2017, 2018 will be a record year for floods

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Trans Mountain pipeline opponents vow to keep fighting

Canada is coughing up $3.5 billion to buy the floundering Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project from Kinder Morgan. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had vowed “to get that pipeline built,” but pipeline resistance groups aren’t backing down, either.

“This is a declaration of war against indigenous people because they’re not recognizing our own sovereignty,” says Kanahus Manuel, a Secwepemc midwife and mother of four. “So we are putting on our war paint and we are putting on our battle gear and we’re going to fight.”

The Houston-based company had stopped all non-essential spending on the project last month after facing broad opposition from environmental groups, indigenous communities, and the province of British Columbia. Canada says it plans to fund construction of the project until it can find another buyer to take over. If completed, it would nearly triple the pipeline’s capacity to transport crude and refined oil from Alberta to B.C.

Manuel’s group, Tiny House Warriors, plans on physically blocking construction of the pipeline. The group has constructed 10 tiny houses on wheels that they’ll use to deter construction of the pipeline on Secwepemc land. “We’re going to stand with our bodies as our weapons to defend the last of our sacred lands from any type of further encroachment or invasion,” Manuel says.

Will George is a leader with the Tsleil-Waututh, which built a Watch House — traditionally used to monitor an enemy — atop Burnaby Mountain as part of their opposition to the pipeline. “If anything, we’re going to ramp up our demonstration and our movement,” George says. “We’ll do whatever it takes to stop this pipeline.”

Greenpeace, the Coast Salish Watch House, and other grassroots indigenous and environmental groups have already planned an emergency rally in Vancouver this evening.

Over the weekend, an oil spill at a pump station near Barriere, B.C., forced Kinder Morgan to temporarily shut down the existing Trans Mountain pipeline. Pipeline opponents are also calling out Trudeau for abandoning federal commitments to take action on climate change and respect the rights of indigenous nations.

“It’s an outrageous and reckless decision by the Canadian government. This was a government that stood up in Paris and promised climate action. It’s a government that committed to the U.N. declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples,” says Mike Hudema, climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace Canada. “Today it is breaking both of those promises by not just supporting a pipeline but buying a new massive tar sands pipeline project.”

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Trans Mountain pipeline opponents vow to keep fighting

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California’s next megaflood would be worse than eight Hurricane Katrinas

Worse than the 1906 earthquake. Worse than eight Hurricane Katrinas. Worse than every wildfire in California history, combined. The world’s first trillion-dollar natural disaster.

A wintertime megaflood in California could turn out to be the worst natural disaster in U.S. history by far, and we are making it much more likely, according to an alarming study published this week in Nature Climate Change.

The odds are good that such a flood will happen in the next 40 years, the study says. By the end of the century, it’s a near certainty. (And then another one hits, and another — three such storms are possible by 2100). By juicing the atmosphere, extreme West Coast rainstorms will happen at five times their historical rate, if humanity continues on roughly a business-as-usual path, the new research predicts.

The study’s lead author, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a lifelong Californian, says the best way to understand what we’re doing to California’s weather is to think of earthquakes.

“A major earthquake on the Hayward Fault in the San Francisco Bay Area or on the San Andreas Fault east of Los Angeles is an inevitability in the long run, and either event would likely be devastating,” Swain says. “Yet the big difference with the risk of a major flood event is that human activities are greatly increasing the likelihood of the physical event itself through the emission of greenhouse gases.”

Three years ago, much of the Pacific Northwest sat in stunned silence after reading Kathryn Schulz’s Pulitzer-winning description of “the really big one” — an unimaginably huge earthquake, a full-margin rupture of the Cascadia subduction zone. Within months of that article, Congress held hearings and proposed new funding to prepare.

California’s looming megaflood would likely be much worse.

In terms of sheer destruction, displacement of human life, re-ordering of society, a California megaflood would be without parallel in modern U.S. history. The state’s levees aren’t designed to attempt to hold back such a flood. The blow to the world’s sixth largest economy would send shockwaves throughout the world.

On his blog, Swain wrote: “Climate scientists are sometimes accused of being ‘alarmist,’ but I would argue that alarm is a reasonable human response.”

In 2011, the USGS assessed the modern-day implications of a flood like the one that happened in the winter of 1862 — currently the worst flood in California history. An unceasing onslaught of atmospheric rivers brought Los Angeles three years worth of rain, more than 36 inches, in a month and a half. Floodwaters turned California’s Central Valley into an inland sea, from Bakersfield to Redding. When it was all finished, the storms had destroyed one-third of the taxable land in California, and bankrupted the state.

Swain’s research considered the consequences of these megafloods on the state’s water management system and found the signs of catastrophe:

[S]uch events would be unprecedented in California’s modern era of extensive water infrastructure. Few of the dams, levees and canals that currently protect millions living in California’s flood plains and facilitate the movement of water from Sierra Nevada watersheds to coastal cities have been tested by a deluge as severe as the extraordinary 1861–1862 storm sequence—a repeat of which would probably lead to considerable loss of life and economic damages approaching a trillion dollars.

And, deep breaths, this isn’t the worst-case scenario. It is “plausible, perhaps inevitable”, according to the USGS, that a flood even worse than the 1862 disaster will occur again. The USGS called their scenario the “ARkStorm” — a thousand-year megastorm — and made a stark warning: “The hazards associated with such extreme winter storms have not tested modern infrastructure nor the preparedness of the emergency management community.”

For California, it looks like the worst of climate change is just getting started.

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California’s next megaflood would be worse than eight Hurricane Katrinas

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As coral reefs disappear, some tropical fish might just keep swimming

The future looks grim for coral reefs. Warmer oceans, overfishing, pollution, and gradually acidifying waters have destroyed more than a third of the world’s shallow tropical coral reefs. Just this week, a new report said that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef — the crown jewel of the world’s oceans — lost half of its corals in just the past three years. More than 90 percent of the world’s near-surface coral habitat could be gone in the next 30 years.

This is a big deal. Coral reefs support about a quarter of all marine biodiversity in just 1 percent of the ocean’s space. And so tropical reef fish, among the most vulnerable organisms when it comes to climate change, are increasingly under threat.

But amid all the bad news, it’s vitally important to have a reality check: Some reefs and reef fish — the familiar angelfish, eels, snappers, and parrotfishes — will survive. We are just now learning some basics of how Earth’s vast biodiversity responds to warming, and there’s a growing realization that deeper, cooler waters are one possible future for coral reefs and the fish that inhabit them.

A recent study in the journal Scientific Reports builds upon other studies showing that some coral reef fish may be more resilient than we thought to climate change, boosting chances that reef ecosystems might withstand the current onslaught. The evidence suggests that tropical fish species can adapt to warmer waters just by moving a few feet down to cooler waters. For some fish, profound changes don’t necessarily lead to extinction.

Carole Baldwin, a marine biologist at the Smithsonian Institution and lead author of the new study, thinks that deeper waters are the future for coral reefs, and she makes a case for hope amidst uncertainty.

“We know that fishes in general, like a lot of marine organisms, can survive a lot deeper,” says Baldwin. “We figured that there was a lot of habitat that is suitable for reef organisms between 500 and 1,000 feet, and sure enough, that is exactly what we found.”

Baldwin and her colleagues have discovered and named a new zone of the ocean between about 400 and 1,000 feet down where species may be beginning to flee and morph into entirely new ecosystems. Baldwin had to use a submarine to conduct her research off the coast of Curaçao in the Caribbean.

The new oceanic realm that Baldwin and her colleagues have identified — the “rariphotic zone” — is named for its lack of sunlight (rari = low, photic = light).

As a curator of the Smithsonian’s fish collection, the largest of its kind in the world, Baldwin knows a thing or two about tropical fish. And it’s possible that this “new” zone has actually been around for a long time, providing refuge for surface fish during times of environmental turmoil. Baldwin says there’s evidence that gobies — a type of small, bottom-dwelling fish — migrated from shallow reefs to deep reefs in response to warmer waters about 10 million to 14 million years ago. She wants to expand her work in the rariphotic zone to study other groups of fishes and the corals themselves, in an attempt to learn more about larger-scale responses to ocean warming.

“The hopeful thing is that if species start moving deeper now or in the future in response to warming surface waters or deteriorating reefs, that there are these other zones that they can go to.”

Rich Pyle, a fish scientist with the Hawaii Biological Survey, agrees that deep water corals hold immense promise for conservation efforts.

“The more we look, the more obvious it is that there are no natural ecology-wide boundaries” that prevent shallow fish from descending to greater depths, he says.

But it’s not as if surface fish can just pack up and move to deeper waters overnight, either. Pyle says that there are certain species, such as some rays, that live at both shallow and deep waters, and those are the ones that stand the best chance of survival.

“If we screw up the shallow reefs,” Pyle says, “we can take some comfort knowing that the deeper reefs still have populations of these organisms.”

Pyle is a pioneer of deep-water coral exploration. But the new zone that Baldwin and her colleagues have identified goes even further into the depths.

“These deeper coral reefs below about 30 meters have been barely looked at for the past several decades,” Pyle says. One reason is that’s about as deep as scuba diving gear allows you to easily go.

As a result, no historical data exist for species in this zone of tropical reefs. There isn’t even much data about temperature at these depths, though it is significantly cooler and more stable than surface waters.

To be sure, Pyle says there’s reason to believe that deep reefs may even be in greater danger than their shallower cousins.

For example, it’s possible that stronger hurricanes have started raining thicker plumes of sediment down on deep reefs, burying fragile corals. Increased surface level pollution may also block light, stopping photosythesis. Deep reefs are also more accustomed to steady water temperatures, so they could be more vulnerable to severe marine heat waves of the future.

All of this argues for doubling down on deep-reef research in preparation for the ravages of climate change in the coming decades.

“We just need to spend more time out there in the sub to see what’s happening,” says Baldwin. She thinks it’s a good idea to begin designating deeper reefs as marine protected areas, too.

Reefs will survive, at least in some form. It’s just a question of what they will look like. Genetic engineering of corals, farming corals, transplanting corals, or trusting corals to adapt in surprising ways are all strategies currently underway.

And it looks like coral fish have a shot at surviving, too. If they migrated to the depths in the past, maybe they could do it again.

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As coral reefs disappear, some tropical fish might just keep swimming

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Nor’easters are now just as dangerous as hurricanes

On Friday and Saturday, the winter storm now moving up the East Coast will unleash hurricane-force winds on Washington, blizzard conditions across parts of New York and New England, and inflict the worst coastal flood in Boston’s history.

By all accounts, this storm is a monster. It’s also the latest sign that New England’s long-feared coastal flooding problem is already here — and it’s time to admit climate change is its primary cause.

The storm’s strongest winds will point squarely toward the shore, smashing huge waves the size of three-story apartment buildings into coastal defenses, and roiling the sea as far away as South America. To make matters worse, it’s arriving in conjunction with a full moon, when tides are normally highest. The system is predicted to stall out for more than 24 hours just off the New England coastline — for an astonishing three straight tide cycles.

Although the storm is getting little attention in the national news, the National Weather Service and meteorologists across the Northeast are screaming at a fever pitch. Boston-area municipalities have taken heed, issuing evacuations, preparing dive-team equipment for water rescues, and deploying a temporary flood barrier designed as a climate change-resilience measure. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker has activated the National Guard to help with preparations.

Call it a nor’easter, a “bomb cyclone,” a superstorm — in an era of worsening extreme weather, fierce winter systems like this are arriving with startling frequency. And flooding is by far the most dangerous and destructive consequence. This week’s storm, like every weather event, is inseparable from the context of the warming climate. Nor’easters like this one are now a threat to public safety on par with hurricanes, and it’s time we start treating them that way.

This week’s storm is larger in size than Hurricane Sandy, with winds just as strong. National Weather Service in Boston called the storm’s gusts “about as extreme as it gets” and labeled the flooding it will spur a “life and death situation.” In a harrowing statement, the agency warns of massive power outages, the destruction of coastal homes, and some neighborhoods being “cut off for an extended time” from the rest of the metro area. It’s possible that sea walls and other semi-permanent coastal defenses could be breached, or beaches and dunes erased from the map — exposing vulnerable coastal communities and permanently altering the geography of New England.

Nor’easters draw their energy from clashing regions of warm and cold air, often producing massive circulations double the size of hurricanes. Hurricanes usually have much stronger winds at ground level, though, which is why they’re typically more destructive. But as seas have risen across the northeastern U.S. over the past century due to climate change, the flooding impact of what were once relatively routine winter storms has quickly grown.

While hurricanes are also expected to eventually grow stronger, there’s no convincing evidence they clearly have yet — although last year’s hurricane season is a worrying harbinger. Nor’easters are also expected to get worse due to climate change, as warmer air provides them with additional water vapor, fueling their ability to strengthen. Add to that, sea levels in Massachusetts have increased by about a foot over the past 100 years, and should rise by a further 3 to 9 feet by the end of this century.

Winter superstorms that bring high-level coastal flooding to northern locales like Boston are already occurring with alarming regularity. Only 34 hurricanes have passed within 200 miles of the city since 1851 — an average of one every five years. And only nine of these created a significant rise in the tides. Meanwhile more than 90 of the top 100 floods in Boston were spawned by nor’easters, and 13 of the top 20 have happened since 2000.

Though it’s one of the most severe examples in history, today’s storm is not the first one to hit the most densely populated part of the country with the power of a hurricane. It’s not even the first one this year — in January, another “bomb cyclone” floated rafts of ice into flooded Boston streets.

There are around three strong nor’easters every winter, 15 times as frequent as hurricanes — plenty of opportunity for repeat flooding disasters. A study earlier this year showed that record flooding could happen in New York City every five years starting just a few decades from now, largely because sea level rise has transformed nor’easters into coastline-devouring monsters.

Storms like these — technically called “extratropical cyclones,” because they form outside the tropics — don’t come with scary cone-shaped tracking maps like hurricanes or official names that can be blasted across social media. Still, they have quickly become the single biggest threat to coastal development across most of the northeast.

Coastal floods are one of the leading indicators that the world is warming. Given the path we’re on, the worst is yet to come.

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Nor’easters are now just as dangerous as hurricanes

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Ready or not, winter ‘bomb cyclone’ heads for East Coast

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Much of the eastern United States has been assaulted by brutally cold temperatures over the last week. New Year’s Eve revelers in New York City rang in 2018 in 9 degree weather — the coldest midnight temperature since 1907.

And the worst is yet to come.

On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that a “bomb cyclone” is expected to batter the East Coast later this week. A weather system only earns that name by dropping in pressure rapidly — at least 24 millibars over 24 hours — in a process called bombogenesis. Winds could kick up to 55 mph just off the coast of New England, a prospect that has prompted local weather stations to warn of hurricane-force winds.

In Boston, which is no stranger to cold weather and has suffered through brutally low temperatures this past week, the National Weather Service forecasts near-blizzard conditions, with just a quarter-mile of visibility.

But the snow won’t be limited to northern states. As far south as Georgia and Florida, forecasters are calling for potentially dangerous winter weather, with several inches of snow in some areas.

In late 2016, Mother Jones reported that climate change may be contributing to such weather events.

The theory — advanced by Rutgers professor Jennifer Francis and other scientists — is that the rapidly warming Arctic is affecting the jet stream in ways that can contribute to bone-chilling weather in other parts of the Northern Hemisphere:

To understand how it works, it first helps to think of the jet stream as a river of air that flows from west to east in the Northern Hemisphere, bringing with it much of our weather. Its motion — sometimes in a relatively straight path, sometimes in a more loopy one — is driven by a difference in temperatures between the equator and the North Pole. Southern temperatures are of course warmer, and because warm air takes up more space than cold air, this leads to taller columns of air in the atmosphere. “If you were sitting on top of a layer of atmosphere and you were in DC, looking northward, it would be like looking down a hill, because it’s warmer where you are,” explains Francis. The jet stream then flows “downhill,” so to speak, in a northward direction. But it’s also bent by the rotation of the Earth, leading to its continual wavy, eastward motion. As the Arctic rapidly heats up, however, there’s less of a temperature difference between the equator and the poles, and the downhill slope in the atmosphere is accordingly less steep.

That shrinking temperature difference is what wreaks havoc on the jet stream. “When the jet stream gets weaker, it meanders more,” explained Francis in an interview this week. “It wanders north and south and when it gets into one of these wandering and wavy patterns, that’s when we see these pools of cold air pulled southward.” Those pools of cold air are what vast parts of the country are experiencing right now.

The bomb cyclone is expected to leave bone-chilling cold in its wake — even colder than the last few weeks. Temperatures will likely drop 20 to 40 degrees below normal, the Washington Post reports. That means sub-zero in nearly all of New England — and lows reaching down into the 20s, if you can believe it, in Florida.

Seasoned experts over at the National Weather Service have tips for avoiding hypothermia. President Donald Trump simply suggests we “bundle up.”

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Ready or not, winter ‘bomb cyclone’ heads for East Coast

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Other Minds – Peter Godfrey-Smith

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Other Minds

The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

Peter Godfrey-Smith

Genre: Life Sciences

Price: $3.99

Publish Date: December 6, 2016

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Seller: Macmillan / Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC


Although mammals and birds are widely regarded as the smartest creatures on earth, it has lately become clear that a very distant branch of the tree of life has also sprouted higher intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. In captivity, octopuses have been known to identify individual human keepers, raid neighboring tanks for food, turn off lightbulbs by spouting jets of water, plug drains, and make daring escapes. How is it that a creature with such gifts evolved through an evolutionary lineage so radically distant from our own? What does it mean that evolution built minds not once but at least twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter? In Other Minds , Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how subjective experience crept into being—how nature became aware of itself. As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind’s fitful development, Godfrey-Smith shows how unruly clumps of seaborne cells began living together and became capable of sensing, acting, and signaling. As these primitive organisms became more entangled with others, they grew more complicated. The first nervous systems evolved, probably in ancient relatives of jellyfish; later on, the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous mollusks, abandoned their shells and rose above the ocean floor, searching for prey and acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so. Taking an independent route, mammals and birds later began their own evolutionary journeys. But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? Drawing on the latest scientific research and his own scuba-diving adventures, Godfrey-Smith probes the many mysteries that surround the lineage. How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually “think for themselves”? What happens when some octopuses abandon their hermit-like ways and congregate, as they do in a unique location off the coast of Australia? By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots and comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind—and on our own.

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Other Minds – Peter Godfrey-Smith

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