Articles by Maywa Montenegro

Arctic sea ice and global thawing

Once again National Geographic Magazine has managed to knock my socks off, this time with its June '07 issue. Vanishing Sea Ice is journalist and photographer Paul Nicklen's touching homage to the Arctic and its wildlife through the lens of his camera: a decade-long documentary of its accelerating demise. Big Thaw, meanwhile, zooms out to the global level to tell how ice around the world is fast receding. Global warming-induced meltage is a familiar story by now, but new studies are showing that -- due to multiple positive feedback effects -- the decline is occurring more rapidly than scientists had anticipated. Which, as the article discusses, brings sea level rise and habitat loss to the visible horizon.

A point which I personally hadn't considered is the widespread fallout of mountain glacier melting:

A new website assesses property risk

Earlier this week I learned that I'm eligible, via my mother, for Dutch citizenship, which means I could potentially work, vote, and live in Holland without having to go through the hassle of visa applications.

Before moving to a country that lies largely below sea level, though, I might want to check out Climate Appraisal, which, as its name suggests, is a website where you can size up the environmental hazards of your desired address. A joint project of a former banking executive and climate scientists at the University of Arizona in Tucson, the site has plenty of free information on numerous ways your property might perish, including earthquakes, shoreline reduction, hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, fire, and flood. Each of those categories provides a definition, scientific overview, and scientific links. If you're willing to fork over actual cash, the premium subscription will generate maps, graphs, and tables in each of the hazard categories specific to your address. (Clicking on the floods tab, for instance, might tell me how many times the rivers in my county have breached their banks in the past 100 years.)

I’ve been Gored in my own neighborhood

"A politics of reason faces a strong headwind." These were Al Gore's words last night, at New York's 92nd Street Y, where I had the unique pleasure of seeing him interviewed by Charlie Rose. The main topic of discussion was Gore's new book, The Assault On Reason, which not surprisingly is #1 on Amazon's bestseller list ("It's not about K-Fed," Gore was quick to chime in). Apart from offering a scathing critique of the Bush administration, the book lambastes the shallowness of today's media -- the amount of time spent on Pamela Anderson versus, say, the still ravaged landscape of New Orleans. And Rose, it was refreshing to see, did not fall into the trap, as did Diane Sawyer, of lobbing the precise sort of vacuous soundbites that Gore goes after in his book.

It was also pretty stunning to hear a man as versed in the details of the Federalist Papers as he is in the melting rates of the Antarctic ice shelf. In response to the Rose question, "When did the decline of reason begin?", he skipped seamlessly through a history of the Enlightenment, the emigration of those ideas to a fledgling nation across the pond, and the firm establishment of reason in the founding fathers' design of the U.S. government. He talked about the dawn of television -- a box with flickering lights that Americans sit motionless in front of for about 3.5 hours a day -- and the accompanying decline in substantive media. I won't go into all the details here, or try to regurgitate the conversation, but suffice to say I was duly impressed.

A not-so-subtle call for climate change attention

At the base of snow-capped Mount Ararat, where the bible says Noah's ark came to rest after 40 days of flooding, environmentalist volunteers are constructing a miniature version of the famed zoological craft.

Its completion is being timed to coincide with next month's G8 summit in Germany, where climate change will be a hot issue. Last week, for instance, scientists from all across Africa plus Brazil, India, China, Mexico, and South Africa presented joint statements to German prime minister Angela Merkel calling for "united global action on energy efficiency and climate change mitigation."

The Network of African Science Academies (NASAC) also called for a joint fund to be set up between the G8 and the African Union to finance shared science and technology projects in priority areas.

All of which is a good thing, since this ark -- 10 meters long and 4 meters high -- might not quite cut it.