Over at my mud wrestling blog What'sUpWithThatWatts et al I started a collection of YouTube videos and lectures describing various aspects and phases of our Earth's life story, evolution if you will, that I intent to mirror over here.
It's a reaction to my growing understanding of how many people out there have no genuine awareness of Earth's complexity and depth.
Tragically, people who never ponder the reality that all we have today is the direct product of four and a half billion years of evolution, unfolding one magnificent day after another, lack the foundation to understand what we are doing to our planet and life support system these days. It explains why we have so many profoundly ignorant and self-deluded politicians and 'masters of the universe' these days.
It's a reaction to my growing understanding of how many people out there have no genuine awareness of Earth's complexity and depth.
Tragically, people who never ponder the reality that all we have today is the direct product of four and a half billion years of evolution, unfolding one magnificent day after another, lack the foundation to understand what we are doing to our planet and life support system these days. It explains why we have so many profoundly ignorant and self-deluded politicians and 'masters of the universe' these days.
When I toss out a concept such our "Global Heat and Moisture Distribution Engine" it's blank faces all around. Why? I'm fearing listeners have no fundamental conception for the intricate interconnections between our evolving Earth, oceans and land masses. Without that awareness, of course they'll never get it.
After all, our atmosphere is the direct product of a fantastic evolutionary process that married geology and biology and took billions of years to unfold. Without understanding how it got here, there's no way one can comprehend what we, collectively as a society, are doing to it and our children's future.
This is the first in a series of posts where I want to explore and describe this Global Heat and Moisture Distribution Engine that sustains us all.
For an introductory overview I will leave it to the NOVA/PBS/NASA video Earth From Space. It isn't a complete review of our climate system, it's dedicated to looking at how all the natural forces that surround us come together to create the life sustaining biosphere on our one and only home planet. Yet, it can't help but review a good deal of information about what's behind our global weather systems.
Please note, if viewing at YouTube you can link directly to a specific section of the video by adjusting the final digits of the url. 12:20 would be =12m20s
Feel free to copy and share the following notes.
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Earth From Space Full HD Nova
Published on Jul 15, 2014
YouTube channel Natural World
The groundbreaking two-hour special that reveals a spectacular new space-based vision of our planet. Produced in extensive consultation with NASA scientists, NOVA takes data from earth-observing satellites and transforms it into dazzling visual sequences, each one exposing the intricate and surprising web of forces that sustains life on earth.
Featuring interviews with:
Waleed Abdalati (NASA Chief Scientist):
Piers Sellers (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)
Emily Shuckburgh (deputy head, Polar Oceans Team, British Antarctic Survey
Jeff Halverson ( University of Maryland, Baltimore Campus, Meteorologist)
David Adamec (NASA Scientist)
Gene C. Feldman (NASA Oceanographer)
Charlie Bristow ( Birkbeck, University of London)
Holly Gilbert (NASA Solar Physicist)
