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The Paris climate conference has set nations against each other, and kicked off huge arguments over economic policies, green regulations and even personal lifestyle choices. But one thing isn’t up for debate: the evidence for climate change is unequivocal.

Stop what you’re doing and watch this absolutely gorgeous Wes Anderson-esque documentary film dedicated to Union Glacier in Antarctica. 

From Studiocanoe: 

“Union Glacier is located in the southern Ellsworth Mountains of West Antarctica. This is a documentary about a small team of people who live and work on the glacier during the Antarctic summer.

In 2013 I was the filmmaker attached to the Scott Expedition - the journey that completed Captain Scott’s final, ill-fated expedition from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole and back again. Our team passed through Union Glacier Camp on route to the starting point of Scott’s Hut at Cape Evans, but after becoming stranded at the camp and working with the staff there; I decided to make this documentary.

You can see a short trailer for the film here: 

For me, this film seems a bit like an antithesis to many expedition and adventure documentaries. There is no great achievement or record broken, nor any real challenge to overcome. Instead it concerns minor details; the everyday tasks of the staff that were made more special by the environment surrounding them. And in fact, I think that’s what attracted me to make this film - the delightful trivialities of an average life, working in Antarctica.”

Science Becomes Art: Dance Your Ph.D. Thesis!

Modern dance isn’t typically known for exploring subjects like chemical signaling and defense in brown algal kelps. Avant-garde dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham wasn’t known for developing statistical tools for biomedical research. 

But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done, and a crop of Ph.D. students and recent graduates is showing how. Just before the holiday last week, Science magazine announced the winners of its eighth annual Dance Your Ph.D. thesis competition. Contestants from the social, physical and life sciences interpreted highly complex concepts through movement, drawing on elements from tango, interpretive dance, hip-hop and other styles.

This year’s winner among 31 entries was Florence Metz, a Ph.D. student at the University of Bern in Switzerland, who took home $1,000 for a dance about her thesis on water policy. Her achievement represents the first time a social scientist has won the overall competition. See the other winners and videos of their dances below.

Here’s what @cop21paris and their ‘Mission:Innovation’ plan has set forth (provided by @guardian). [source]

Keeping temperature rises below 1.5C

John Schellnhuber, a scientist who advises Germany and the Vatican, has stated 1.5C marks the point where there is a real danger of serious “tipping points” in the world’s climate. The goal of 1.5C is a big leap below the 2C that nearly 200 countries agreed as a limit six years ago in Copenhagen. But bear in mind we’ve already hit 1C, and recent data shows no sign of a major fall in the global emissions driving the warming.

(Above) Rivers of water in Greenland created as ice melts. This flows to the bottom of the glaciers through holes, which helps glaciers retreat faster and dumps more water into the ocean. Source: @slateinbrief via @badastronomy from ‘Inundated by Global Warming’

Pledges to curb emissions

Before the conference started, more than 180 countries had submitted pledges to cut or curb their carbon emissions (intended nationally defined contributions, or INDCs). These are not sufficient to prevent global temperatures from rising beyond 2C – in fact it is thought they will lead to a 2.7C rise or higher. 

The INDCs are recognized under the agreement, but are not legally binding.

(Above) ‘Climate change: How do we know?’ courtesy of @nasa​ from their ‘Global Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet’ resource page

Long-term global goal for net zero emissions

Countries have promised to try to bring global emissions down from peak levels as soon as possible. More significantly, they pledged “to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century”. Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute said the long-term goal was “transformational” and “sends signals into the heart of the markets”.

What does this mean? Getting to “net zero emissions” between 2050 and 2100. The UN’s climate science panel says net zero emissions must happen by 2070 to avoid dangerous warming.

(Above) A new high-resolution computer model created by NASA shows carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas driving global warming, as you’ve never seen it before. Source: @nasa, @vox

Take stock every five years

187 countries have put forward their plans for how to cut and curb their emissions beyond 2020, as far out as 2030. But those pledges are not enough to keep warming below 2C, beyond which climate change is expected to have catastrophic impacts. According to several analyses, the plans will see around 2.7-3C. That’s why the text has a review mechanism to ramp up those pledges every five years, in order to make them strong enough to keep under 2C. The first stocktake will happen in 2018, but the first one under the deal happens in 2023. The text promises that parties “shall undertake … [the] first global stocktake in 2023 and every five years”.

“We just can’t seem to break our addiction to the kinds of fuel that will bring back a climate last seen by the dinosaurs, a climate that will drown our coastal cities and wreak havoc on the environment and our ability to feed ourselves. All the while, the glorious sun pours immaculate free energy down upon us, more than we will ever need. Why can’t we summon the ingenuity and courage of the generations that came before us? The dinosaurs never saw that asteroid coming. What’s our excuse?”  

– Neil deGrasse Tyson, ‘The World Set Free’ (Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey; @natgeo)

(Above) You can’t ignore what you can see. So if you could see CO2 emissions, would they be harder to ignore? That’s the idea behind this GIF created from a clip from Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos. CO2 is an invisible gas and though not bad in moderation, the amount humans have been releasing into the environment in recent years is record-breaking and detrimental. But what if that gas wasn’t invisible? What if you could very clearly see it? 

Source: @micdotcom

Loss and damage

The deal includes loss and damage, a mechanism for addressing the financial losses vulnerable countries face from climate impacts such as extreme weather. But it also includes a clause that will keep the US happy – that it won’t face financial claims from vulnerable countries hit by climate change: it “does not involve or provide a basis for any liability or compensation”.

(Above) Hurricane Irene striking Northeast United States, and an example of increasing accuracy in forecasting storm track. Its landfall in eastern North Carolina and path northward were accurately predicted more than four days in advance by NOAA’s National Hurricane Center, which used information from weather satellites, hurricane models, aircraft observations, and other data. NOAA’s delivery of critical environmental forecasts provided essential advance information that allowed emergency officials to plan necessary evacuations and sparked individuals to take safety precautions. Source: NOAA

Money

Finance to help developing countries adapt to climate change and transition to clean energy was an important sticking point in the negotiations. This part of the deal has been moved into the non-legally binding “decision text” – a sop to the US, which knows it would not be able to get such a pledge of cash past the Republican-controlled Senate.

The draft text says that the countries “intend to continue their existing collective mobilisation goal through 2025”. That means the flow of $100bn (£66bn) a year will continue beyond 2020. By 2025 the draft agreement undertakes to improve on that “from a floor of $100bn”.

(Above) Ultimately, money saved on having to rebuild infrastructure, national security threats due to land conflicts over scarcity of resources, healthcare finance from sickness due to air and water pollution, and the cost of running oil refineries which in turn contribute to all the above are among the multitude of reasons our world must drastically divest from fossil fuels. 

Teaches big ideas in mathematics, engineering, and computational thinking

Provides contextualized activities that relate learning to real-world applications

Teaches students to use programming as a problem-solving tool

Keeps students engaged

Helps students develop 21st Century college and career readiness skills

New Exoplanets Named-By You!!!

I don’t usually print press releases (this is my first) but there is just way too much cool information here not to:

The votes are in — the names of 19 ExoWorlds (14 stars and 31 exoplanets orbiting them) have been chosen by public vote in the NameExoWorlds contest, and accepted by the IAU. Reflecting the truly international interest in astronomy, over half a million votes from 182 countries and territories contributed to the new official designations of the alien worlds.

Although people have been naming celestial objects for millennia, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) is the authority responsible for assigning official names to celestial bodies. The NameExoWorlds contest provided the first opportunity for the public to name exoplanets, and their stars. The winning names are to be used freely in parallel with the existing scientific nomenclature, with due credit to the clubs or organisations that proposed them.

With voting concluding on 31 October 2015, a total of 573 242 votes from the public have contributed to the naming of 31 exoplanets and 14 host stars. Proposers of the winning names are to be awarded a plaque commemorating their contribution to astronomy and they will be given the exciting opportunity to name a minor planet.

The public voted on the 274 proposed ExoWorld names submitted by a wide variety of astronomy organisations from 45 countries all over the world (iau1511) — these included amateur astronomy groups, schools, universities and planetariums. The successful entries were received from across the globe — four were received from North America (USA, Canada), one from Latin America and the Caribbean (Mexico), two from the Middle East & Africa (Morocco, Syria), six from Europe (France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland), and six from Asia–Pacific (Australia, Japan, Thailand).

The IAU Executive Committee Working Group on the Public Naming of Planets and Planetary Satellites validated all the individual cases of the winning names from the vote, as stipulated in the guidelines, and made appropriate modifications to the original proposals where necessary, in full agreement with the proposers.

However, after extensive deliberation, the Committee decided to annul the vote for one particular ExoWorld — tau Boötis — as the winning name was judged not to conform with the IAU rules for naming exoplanets. To this end, the IAU will organise a new contest to decide the name of tau Boötis in the future.

Poor Pluto

Dubbed as the Top Post of the Year by Imgur, this amazing gif captured the New Horizon’s pass by unlike any other.

After being officially demoted from a planet to a dwarf planet, it once again had its cold, icy heart broken this year when NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew by and didn’t even stop for a visit.

This new animation created by Universities Australia as part of their Keep it Clever campaign explains why it’s more important than ever to put our money where our scientists are.

Watch the video and sign the Keep it Clever petition if you agree that the Australian government needs to support Australian university research.  

for when the burnout is real and all you really wanna do is lie in bed and watch things but you gotta at least try to study. these are mostly channels i’ve watched and subscribed to!

sciences

veritasium

it’s okay to be smart

pbs space time

crash course: astronomy

crash course: ecology

crash course: biology

crash course: chemistry

crash course: anatomy and physiology 

crash course: psychology

the school of life: sociology

the school of life: psychotherapy

scishow

scishow space

asapscience

minute physics

minute earth

khan academy

literature / art

crash course: literature

the school of life: literature

the school of life: art/architecture

history / geography / government

crash course: world history (season one)

crash course: world history (season two)

crash course: us history

it’s history: the industrial revolution

it’s history: the history of pirates

it’s history: battlefields (military history)

it’s history: the cold war

the school of life: history

alternate history hub

crash course: intellectual property

crash course: economics

crash course: u.s. government and politics

geography now

the school of life: political theory

it’s history: the history of china

it’s history: weapons of mass destruction

it’s history: the history of sex

extra credits: extra history

khan academy: history

khan academy: american civics

the great war

tom richey: ap euro review

tom richey: ap us history review

cgp grey

math

numberphile

khan academy

philosophy

the school of life: philosophy

the school of life: eastern philosophy

philosophy tube

misc / no particular subject

crash course: big history

ted-ed

smarter every day

in a nutshell

vsauce

dnews

test tube news

test tube plus

seeker daily

the good stuff

This is apparently what I do to destress after a difficult exam.

The playlist for CONQUERING SPACE is complete! Have you caught all of @goodstuffshow‘s episodes? Check out these space cadets covering exoplanets, lunar exploration, and more! 

The Co-Discoverer of Radiation

Henri Becquerel was born in Paris, France on December 15, 1852 into an illustrious scientific family, which produced four generations of scientists. He studied history at the École Polytechnique and engineering at the École des Ponts et Chaussées. In 1892, he became the third in his family to occupy the physics chair at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle. In 1896, while investigating the work of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen and phosphorescence in uranium salts, Becquerel accidentally discovered radioactivity. Becquerel wrapped a fluorescent substance potassium uranyl sulfate in photographic plates and black material in preparation for an experiment requiring bright sunlight. Prior to actually performing the experiment, however,Becquerel found that the photographic plates were already exposed, showing an image of the substance. This discovery led Becquerel to investigate the spontaneous emission of nuclear radiation. In 1903 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Marie and Pierre Curie for his pioneering work on radiation.  It was Madame Marie Curie who is credited with coining the word radiation.

Today the becquerel (symbol Bq) (pronounced: ‘be-kə-rel) is the SI-derived unit of radioactivity. One Bq is defined as the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one nucleus decays per second.  Bonne Anniversaire, Henri!

In today’s economy, this seems to be the most accurate depiction of the scientific method. And with the advent of crowd-sourcing, it’s become simpler for all of us around the globe to properly raise money today to fund the research and progress of tomorrow.

Combining the resources of Craigslist, the connectivity of LinkedIn, the flexible customization of crowd funding and the full integration of existing social media networks, Endeavorist is here.

We Are Endeavorists. We Come In Peace.

We’re here to provide the world’s most inclusive curiosity network and revolutionize the way society connects with research scientists so that we can directly fund the science we want to see move forward.

Sincerely,

Endeavorist | @EndeavoristOrg