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Global Population Special Report: Amazing Photos From 'National Geographic'

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Robert Kunzig - Jan. 04 (Special Report) - By 2050 the total number [world's population] could reach 10.5 billion, or it could stop at eight billion--the difference is about one child per woman. UN demographers consider the middle road their best estimate: They now project that the population may reach nine billion before 2050--in 2045. The eventual tally will depend on the choices individual couples make when they engage in that most intimate of human acts, the one Leeuwenhoek interrupted so carelessly for the sake of science.

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Lightning Captured by X-Ray Camera -- A First

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

National Geographic - By Richard A. Lovett - Dec. 27 (News Report) - The first x-ray images of a lightning strike have been captured by a, well, lightning-fast camera, scientists say. The pictures suggest a lightning bolt carries all its x-ray radiation in its tip.

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Global Warming "Undeniable," U.S. Government Report Says

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

National Geographic - By Christine Dell'Amore - Jul. 28 (Special Report) - An in-depth analysis of ten climate indicators all point to a marked warming over the past three decades, with the most recent decade being the hottest on record, according to the latest of the U.S. National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration's annual "State of the Climate" reports, which was released Wednesday.

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The 21st Century Grid

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

National Geographic - By Joel Achenbach - Jul. 02 (Special Report) - The sun used to govern our lives, but now, thanks to the grid, darkness falls at our convenience. During the Depression, when power lines first electrified rural America, a farmer in Tennessee rose in church one Sunday and said—power companies love this story—"The greatest thing on earth is to have the love of God in your heart, and the next greatest thing is to have electricity in your house." He was talking about a few lightbulbs and maybe a radio. He had no idea.

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Dinosaurs Ten Million Years Older Than Thought

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

National Geographic - By Christine Dell'Amore - Mar. 04 (News Report) - A new dinosaur relative found in Tanzania is the oldest known creature of its kind—a discovery that pushes back the origin of dinosaurs by at least ten million years, paleontologists say. Dubbed Asilisaurus kongwe, the Labrador retriever-size creature

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"Surreal" Vegetarian Spider Found -- A First

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

National Geographic - By Matt Kaplan - Oct. 12 (News Report) - A tropical jumping spider that eats mostly plant buds has been identified, a new study says--making it the only known vegetarian out of some 40,000 spider species. A tropical jumping spider that eats mostly plant buds has been identified, a new study

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Next Ice Age Delayed by Global Warming, Study Says

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

National Geographic - By Christine Dell'Amore - Sep. 04 (News Report) - The North Pole is warmer now than it has been in the past 2,000 years, a trend that is holding off the next ice age, according to the most extensive study yet on Arctic climate change.

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CO2 Levels Highest in Two Million Years

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

National Geographic - By Maggie Koerth-Baker - Jun. 18 (News Report) - By studying chemicals in long-dead, single-celled plankton called foraminifera, though, the team behind the new study was able to extend the climate record back 2.1 million years

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"Kite" Turbines Could Power Megacities Like New York and Tokyo, Research Suggests

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

National Geographic - By David Braun - Jun. 16 (News Report) - Five or six miles up in the atmosphere, near where airliners reach cruising altitude, very strong winds blow incessantly over many densely populated regions of the world. Researchers at the Carnegie Institution and California State University believe that, if the technical challenges can be resolved, large metropolises like New York, Seoul, and Tokyo may be able to tap into the high-altitude winds for abundant energy. One possible way to do this could be by using giant tethered kitelike wind turbines, like the one imagined in this illustration.

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Amphibian Loss: The Vanishing

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

National Geographic - By Jennifer Holland - Mar. 19 (Special Report) - Amphibians are among the groups hardest hit by today's many strikes against wildlife. As many as half of all species are under threat. Hundreds are sliding toward extinction, and dozens are already lost. The declines are rapid and widespread, and their causes complex—even at the ravine near Limón the bulldozer is just one hazard of many. But there are glimmers of hope. Rescue efforts now under way will shelter some animals until the storm of extinction passes. And, at least in the lab, scientists have treated frogs for a fungal disease that is devastating populations around the world.

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Canadian Oil Sands

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

National Geographic - By Robert Kunzig - Mar. 03 (Special Report) - Nowhere on Earth is more earth being moved these days than in the Athabasca Valley. To extract each barrel of oil from a surface mine, the industry must first cut down the forest, then remove an average of two tons of peat and dirt that lie above the oil sands layer, then two tons of the sand itself. It must heat several barrels of water to strip the bitumen from the sand and upgrade it, and afterward it discharges contaminated water into tailings ponds like the one near Mildred Lake. They now cover around 50 square miles. Last April some 500 migrating ducks mistook one of those ponds, at a newer Syncrude mine north of Fort McKay, for a hospitable stopover, landed on its oily surface, and died. The incident stirred international attention—Greenpeace broke into the Syncrude facility and hoisted a banner of a skull over the pipe discharging tailings, along with a sign that read "World's Dirtiest Oil: Stop the Tar Sands."

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Alien-like Squid With "Elbows" Filmed at Drilling Site

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

National Geographic - By Kelly Hearn - Nov. 29 (News Report) - mile and a half (two and a half kilometers) underwater, a remote control submersible's camera has captured an eerie surprise: an alien-like, long-armed, and—strangest of all—"elbowed" Magnapinna squid. (See photos of Magnapinna.) Printer Friendly Email to a Friend What's This? SHARE Digg StumbleUpon Reddit RELATED PHOTOS: Colossal Squid Revealed in First In-Depth Look (April 30, 2008) PHOTO: Giant Squid Captured, Filmed for First Time (December 22, 2006) VIDEO: Giant Squid Dissected in Public (July 21, 2008) In a brief video from the dive recently obtained by National Geographic News, one of the rarely seen squid loiters above the seafloor in the Gulf of Mexico on November 11, 2007. The clip—from a Shell oil company ROV (remotely operated vehicle)—arrived after a long, circuitous trip through oil-industry in-boxes and other email accounts.

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India's Highway

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

National Geographic - By Don Belt - Sep. 23 (Special Report) - Much as the U.S. interstate highway system mobilized American society and grooved the postwar economy, India hopes the Golden Quadrilateral will push the country's economic engine into overdrive--bringing the benefits of growth in its booming metropolises out to its impoverished villages, where more than half the population lives.

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Earth: The Biography - Atmosphere

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

National Geographic - By Iain Stewart - Jul. 22 (Special Report) - (VIDEO) The atmosphere is Earth's protective layer, cloaking us in a warm, oxygen-rich embrace and shielding us from the cold hostility of space. It acts as a natural greenhouse, keeping the Earth 51 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it would otherwise be. Yet the atmosphere is also full of contradictions. It's immensely powerful but at the same time highly sensitive. It's destructive, yet it shelters us. It was created in part by the planet's first organisms, and it continues to be essential for life.

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Penguin Chicks Frozen by Global Warming?

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

National Geographic - By John Roach - Jul. 22 (Special Report) - The freezing of chicks is just one example of how human activity is endangering about two thirds of all penguin species, according to a new paper based on decades of research and observations.

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Yellow River

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

National Geographic - By Brook Larmer - Apr. 16 (Special Report) - The proliferation of factories, farms, and cities--all products of China's spectacular economic boomis sucking the Yellow River dry. What water remains is being poisoned. From the canal bank, Shen points to another surreal flash of color: blood-red chemical waste gushing from a drainage pipe, turning the water a garish purple. This canal, which empties into the Yellow River, once teemed with fish and turtles, he says. Now its water is too toxic to use even for irrigation; two of Shen's goats died within hours of drinking from the canal.

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Animal Minds

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

National Geographic - By Virginia Morell - Feb. 21 (Special Report) - Many of Alex's cognitive skills, such as his ability to understand the concepts of same and different, are generally ascribed only to higher mammals, particularly primates. But parrots, like great apes (and humans), live a long time in complex societies. And like primates, these birds must keep track of the dynamics of changing relationships and environments.

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Mexico's Other Border

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

National Geographic - By Cynthia Gorney - Jan. 19 (Special Report) - Every year, hundreds of thousands of Central Americans cross illegally into Mexico--400,235, to cite one oddly precise estimate from the Mexican National Institute of Migration--along the country's southern border, which angles over 750 miles of river and volcanic slope and jungle at the top of Central America. Nobody knows exactly how many of those migrants are headed to the United States, but most put that figure at 150,000 or more a year, and the pace of illegal migration north has picked up dramatically over the past decade, propelled in part by the lingering aftermath of the 1970s and '80s civil wars in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. In depictions of this modern Latin American migration into the United States, the image of a great wave is often invoked, and Mexico's southern border today feels like the place in distant water where the wave first rises and swells and gathers uncontainable propulsive force.

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High-Tech Trash

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0800

National Geographic - By Chris Carroll - Dec. 20 (Special Report) - People have always been proficient at making trash. Future archaeologists will note that at the tail end of the 20th century, a new, noxious kind of clutter exploded across the landscape: the digital detritus that has come to be called e-waste.

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Video: Oil Spills in the Black Sea

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 09:00:51 -0800

National Geographic - Nov. 13 (News Report) - A Russian oil tanker broke apart in the northeastern Black Sea. The accident may become the worst environmental disaster to hit the region in years.

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Global Melting, Big Thaw

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 09:48:35 -0700

National Geographic - By Tim Appenzeller - Sep. 26 (Special Report) - Scientists are finding that glaciers and ice sheets are surprisingly touchy. Instead of melting steadily, like an ice cube on a summer day, they are prone to feedbacks, when melting begets more melting and the ice shrinks precipitously. At Chacaltaya, for instance, the shrinking glacier exposed dark rocks, which sped up its demise by soaking up heat from the sun. Other feedbacks are shriveling bigger mountain glaciers ahead of schedule and sending polar ice sheets slipping into the ocean.

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Struggle for the Soul of Pakistan

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:24:56 -0700

National Geographic - By Don Belt - Aug. 29 (Special Report) - This is also where two conflicting forms of Islam meet: the relatively relaxed and tolerant Islam of India, versus the rigid fundamentalism of the Afghan frontier. Beneath the surface of Pakistan, these opposing forces grind against each other like two vast geologic plates, rattling teacups from Lahore to London, Karachi to New York. The clash between moderates and extremists in Pakistan today reflects this rift, and can be seen as a microcosm for a larger struggle among Muslims everywhere. So when the earth trembles in Pakistan, the world pays attention.

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New Orleans' Levees: Can Disaster Strike Again?

Sat, 12 May 2007 11:54:38 -0700

National Geographic - By Joel Bourne - May. 12 (Special Report) - As residents of New Orleans slowly rebuild their homes and lives after Hurricane Katrina, they are relying on the city's cordon of levees and floodwalls to protect them from the next big storm. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers declared almost a year ago that it had restored the barriers to pre-Katrina strength. But leading experts from the U.S. and the Netherlands say the system is riddled with flaws. They say that even a weaker storm than Katrina could breach the levees if it hit this season. During a recent inspection of the levee system with National Geographic Magazine, engineering professor Bob Bea of the University of California, Berkeley, found multiple weak spots. The most serious flaws turned up in the rebuilt levees along the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet ship channel, which broke in more than 20 places when Katrina's storm surge pounded it, leading to devastating flooding in the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish. Bea found several areas where rainstorms have already eroded the newly rebuilt levees, particularly where they consist of a core of sandy and muddy soils topped with a cap of Mississippi clay. "It's like icing on the top of angel food cake," Bea says. "These levees will not be here if you put a Katrina surge against them."

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Our Wall: U.S.-Mexico Border

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 14:31:12 -0700

National Geographic - By Charles Bowden - Apr. 24 (Special Report) - In the spring of 1929, a man named Patrick Murphy left a bar in Bisbee, Arizona, to bomb the Mexican border town of Naco, a bunny hop of about ten miles (16 kilometers). He stuffed dynamite, scrap iron, nails, and bolts into suitcases and dropped the weapons off the side of his crop duster as part of a deal with Mexican rebels battling for control of Naco, Sonora. When his flight ended, it turned out he'd hit the wrong Naco, managing to destroy property mainly on the U.S. side, including a garage and a local mining company. Some say he was drunk, some say he was sober, but everyone agrees he was one of the first people to bomb the United States from the air.

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Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 13:15:04 -0800

National Geographic - By Kate Ravilious - Feb. 28 (Special Report) - Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural--and not a human-induced--cause, according to one scientist's controversial theory. Earth is currently experiencing rapid warming, which the vast majority of climate scientists says is due to humans pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. (Get an overview: "Global Warming Fast Facts".)

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