GeoLog

climate emergency

An ocean emergency is upon us. Can the world reverse ocean decline?

July 8, 2022
An ocean emergency is upon us. Can the world reverse ocean decline?
Liu Zhenmin addresses the Sustainable Blue Economy Investment Forum. Photo credit: UN DESA / Helen Daun Rosengren

“The ocean is not too big to fail, nor is it too big to fix, but it is too important to ignore.” Last week, Dr Jane Lubchenco voiced a thought we’ve all had at some point: that the ocean is so vast and bountiful, it is almost inconceivable that people could impact it. And yet… Speaking to more than 20 Heads of State and Government, and an audience of thousands of policymakers, ocean scientists, bu ...[Read More]

120 years of the ‘Greenhouse Effect’

January 27, 2021
120 years of the ‘Greenhouse Effect’
The dark side of the big city. Credit: Vyacheslav Nizovtsev (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

120 years ago in 1901, Swedish meteorologist Nils Ekholm used the term ‘greenhouse’ to describe the heating effect that a planet’s atmosphere has on the surface temperature of the planet, the first time that this now much-used and abused metaphor was published. He wrote: “The atmosphere plays a very important part of a double character as to the temperature at the earth’s surface, of which the one ...[Read More]