Category: General

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Earth’s vitals signs go unmeasured

Satellites are eyes and ears for many professions, but their observations give scientists who study climate change the only means to precisely monitor Earth systems worldwide. The New York Times’ recent cover story on glaciers touched on this point. But satellites aren’t built to last forever. So when there’s a gap in observations, one scientist told me that “we basically close our eyes for awhile.”

NASA image: ICESat
The third and last laser on NASA’s Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation ICESat (ICESat) quit working a year ago, outlasting its designed mission length by three and a half years. Problem is, its successor, ICESat II, won’t go aloft for several more years. The Times article failed to fully express problems scientists have when Earth’s vital signs go unmeasured, especially in the case of climate change. Last December I wrote an article for Scientific American that spells out how NASA’s fleet of Earth Observing System orbiters is on borrowed time due to a lack of planning and underfunding.

I talked with senior scientist Thorsten Markus, head of the Cyropheric Sciences Branch at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He said, “It is critical that we continue those time-series observations. For climate change, the satellite provides the only means to truly monitor the Earth on a global basis. There is simply no other way.” When satellites “go dark,” they rob scientists of critical data needed for monitoring climate change and verifying international agreements, just as a critical mass of global players is agreeing that such agreements are essential to the future health of the world’s people and economies.

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Artists can scream. Scientists can’t.

Of all the ways the media has tried to communicate the need to adapt to the consequences of climate change, two points stand out. One is adequately addressing the nuances of science. The other is how to make climate change adaptation and mitigation issues tangible to the public. Now, artists have begun to address both. And, increasingly, they are getting their inspiration from scientists and researchers.

My Yale Forum article, “Artists can scream…Scientists can’t,” was recently featured at the Institute for Sustainable Communities’ Climate Leadership Academy on Adaptation Resilience. The event drew 16 teams from cities around the country to learn about promising practices in climate adaptation at the urban scale. The intensive peer-learning workshop focused on ways to engage citizens more effectively on adaptation. My Yale Forum article explains how scientists realize that pie charts and graphs don’t tell the whole climate change story.


Last week at Boston University (my alma mater), scientists, filmmakers, artists, writers and cartoonists assembled to discuss the public perception of climate change, which is strongly influenced by the media and the arts. I’ve been writing about the public perception of climate change for over three years. I’m always looking for new examples of ways that visual media advances pubic understanding of climate change and its causes, and of the science-based solutions. If you see an art exhibit, cartoon, or film about climate change that’s based on science, share your ideas below. [That’s Simon Faithfull’s self-portrait in Antarctica, featured in “Ice Blink.”]

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Alpinist Conrad Anker Discusses His New Glacier Monitoring Project

I am in Missoula, Montana, this week and yesterday I had a chance to talk with alpinist Conrad Anker. He joined me and other folks attending the 2010 SEJ conference on trip to Glacier National Park. Anker is most famous for his challenging ascents of the worlds highest mountains, including peaks in the high Himalaya, Patagonia, and Antarctica. He is also the climber that found the body of George Mallory in 1999 on Mount Everest (Read Anker’s account in The Lost Explorer). At 47, the Bozeman, Montana, resident now also includes environmentalist and citizen scientist among his chief occupations. Global warming is one of his greatest concerns, he said.

The North Face

Standing on the shores of the McDonald River, Anker told journalists about a new joint project with Extreme Ice Survey to monitor ongoing changes to the glaciers of the Himalaya. A few months ago, Anker led a five-person team of climbers and photographers to install cameras in the Himalayas. It was a project directed by photographer James Balog of Boulder, Colo.-based Extreme Ice Survey. The five cameras are affixed to the sides of mountains. They take photos every 30 minutes and capture time-lapse images of the changing glacial landscape. Two of the cameras monitor the Everest Base Camp and the Khumbu ice fall, and two cameras are equipped with telephoto lenses and focus only on parts of the Khumbu ice. Another camera monitors Nare Glacier, on the south side of nearby Ama Dablam. EIS has cameras all over the world that monitor glaciers in Alaska, the Alps, Greenland, and Iceland.

At Thursday’s reception, Anker gave a talk about images from the EIS project. He showed a time-lapsed series of photos taken from the newly installed Himalayan cameras. Then he showed a historical image from the same location taken 50 years ago, which shows how ice has vanished from the south side of the Khumbu massif and how the glacier is now thin and sparse.

Anker is a member of The North Face climbing team.

Welcome to Children’s Book Reviews. The Kidlitosphere (blogs about Children’s Lit) is filled with reviews of Children’s Books. This site will take you to reviews book report writers

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Hello there!

Hello there. I am Lisa Palmer and welcome to my site. I’m a journalist and writer, a contributor to magazines and online media sites, a freelance editor, a backpacker, a NOLSie, a cyclist, a wife and mother, and a student of the piano hooked on the classic techniques of nineteenth century pianist Charles-Louis Hanon. I’ve written a lot of news and feature articles on science, green energy, climate change, green building and design, and the environment; and I’ve posted some stories here. There’s also information about my background and my professional affiliations.

Since becoming a freelance writer in 2000, I have written on everything from biotechnology and dramatic medical narratives to green tech and sustainable agri-business for leading magazines and newspapers.  Recent projects include freelance stints as a writer and editor for the National Academy of Sciences and as a producer of a reporting guide for journalists covering the green jobs beat for the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism. I am a graduate of Boston University and earned my master’s degree at Simmons College in Boston. Prior to my career as a writer, I was a teacher and a research analyst.

My greatest strength as a writer lies in my ability to jump among diverse communities. Some days I’ll write about a prenatal blood test or cover stories in high crime and poverty neighborhoods. Other days I’ll interview a NASA scientist, talk with the superintendent of an urban school about education reform, sit down with a CEO of a Fortune 500 company to discuss climate change, or have a Tony award winner show me his latest set design. That said, I am deft at covering a variety of topics in both ends of the socio-economic spectrum without pandering to subjects or readers.

I am also a skilled and enthusiastic moderator and speaker. I have appeared before university audiences and at numerous conferences, including the Society of Environmental Journalists’ annual conference. To hire me as a speaker, click here.

Thanks for visiting lisapalmer.com and stop back soon.

We had a couple of writing interns join our group this month. To track writing assignments for the technology blog, I’ve been using JIRA. JIRA is online assignments Effective written communication is an integral part of science education. In this hub the author has shared some new ways to amalgamate writing and science
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