Word: antarctica
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...makes the surprising news out of Greenland so disturbing. That is only one more hint that climate change may hinge on tipping points, where relatively small changes in temperature can suddenly cause disproportionately large effects. In Greenland, it's meltwater greasing the way for massive outflows of ice. In Antarctica, which has one ice sheet the size of Greenland's and another nearly 10 times as large, the same sort of leverage could eventually come into play, with even greater consequences. Yet another tipping point could come as ice sheets shrink and the polar caps start absorbing rather than reflecting...
...like a long time, but, says Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton, "that comes to a couple of feet per century, and that?s more than society is equipped to handle." It doesn?t, moreover, take into account the two mammoth ice sheets of Antarctica, which pack about 20 and 200 feet of potential sea-level rise, respectively, if some new process is discovered that speeds their disintegration. Given what?s being reported in Greenland, the fact that nobody knows what that process might be should be little comfort...
...March of the Penguins: They came all the way from Antarctica for this and they want their stinkin' gift bags...
MARCH OF THE PENGUINS LUC JACQUET Last year's top movie love story? Not Brangelina, nor Naomi Watts and her cybergorilla, but this true fable of domestic devotion among Antarctica's emperor penguins. For months, while the mother forages for food, the father struggles to keep the egg safe in a -80°F chill. This French documentary, for which its heroic makers deserve the Légion d'Honneur and cups of steaming cocoa, became a $77 million sleeper hit in North America. Now that it's winter, watch the film again on DVD, and be warmed...
...DIED. NORMAN VAUGHAN, 100, dog sledder, explorer and the last surviving member of Admiral Richard Byrd's historic 1928 expedition to Antarctica; in Anchorage. As a mushing-obsessed Harvard student, he persuaded Byrd to bring him along as a dog driver. Affectionately dubbed "the Colonel" in his adopted home state of Alaska, he climbed the 3,140-m Mt. Vaughan (named for him by Byrd) to celebrate his 89th birthday. His motto: "Dream big, and dare to fail...