24 September 2008

Scenes from a dying Earth?

A nice collection of NASA satellite imagery captured this month over at guardian.co.uk. Typical planet doom? -type material. Worth a look if you're in to that sort of thing!

The image shows the diversion of the Kosi River (India) into an unused channel, a result of heavy monsoon rain further upstream. Floods continue in the region.

Other images in the collection show

  • 'concerning' cracks forming in the Petermann Glacier in Greenland, generally symbolic of the rapid, human-induced decline of the Arctic in recent years.

  • large wildfires in southern Africa, which have resulted in at least 89 deaths.

  • hurricane-affected regions of the CaribbeanCuba and Haiti have been hit particularly hard several hurricanes. Galveston and the rest of SE Texas have also been heavily affected by Hurricane Ike (Cat 2 at US landfall; 4 in Cuba)).

Snapshots of a dying planet, or just run-of-the-mill climate varibility? These images show nothing definitive, no Cataclysms. Just more datapoints documenting a changing environment, driven by both natural and anthropogenic forces. Only time will tell (and that time may well be soon...).

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In other news, posting is likely to continue to be lite-N-fluffy here for the foreseeable future – lots of meatspace obligations and a touch of burnout. I haven't given up, though...just a bit of a break. The 'collection of found items' in the sidebar will continue to be updated regardless of the level of posting activity.