temperature reconstruction in ice cores

(picture from Danish Center for Ice and Climate)

So, how do scientists figure out the temperature of the past by looking at those ice cores? The not so simple (but really interesting!) answer:

the oxygen (O) in these cores has both 18O and 16O isotopes present. 18O is heavier than 16O (because it has two more neutrons, but all other properties are the same). By looking at the amount of each of these isotopes two scientists can determine temperature. Graphs usually will show δ18O, which means the amount of the heavier of the two isotopes. Low δ18O is associated with low temperatures, because...
So, this is generally what happens during an ice age. There are both 18O and 16O isotopes in the ocean. More 16O evaporates out, since it is lighter in weight. So more 16O ends up in the atmosphere, and more 16O, less 18O precipitates down as snow onto the ice sheet. That means that the ice ends up containing more 16O than 18O total since there is no melt off from the ice to the ocean during an ice age, the isotopes are locked into the ice. During a warm period, there is melt off to the ocean, so the ratio is more balanced. So, when we now look at ice cores, if there is relatively not much 18O locked in the ice, we know that the earth was at a colder temperature. Yay science!

Paleoclimatology in the news!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/vp/32634348#34050658

The reporters make it sound a little cheesy, but it is still so exciting! Ice cores give a carbon record of the atmosphere (by looking at the tiny air bubbles in the ice and measuring carbon dioxide). The best records are from cores taken from Greenland (camp century, and currently GRIP and GISP) and Antarctica (Vostok and currently EPICA). They can measure up to about 800,000 years ago (ice cores from Antarctica can measure this far back).

More gender geography

Poor Women Bear Climate Burden - BBC News

This is what worries me about climate change. The earth will be fine. It has been through periods much warmer and much cooler than today. It's the species on earth (like humans...and polar bears, etc.) that I worry about. Humans in places like the US will generally be fine. But what about people who live in places that will be underwater once temperatures increase? And what about communities in places like Mongolia that will enter a period of permanent drought?

Regarding drought - in many of the areas expected to be affected by drought due to climate change, it is the women who are responsible for the family/community water supply. This isn't true universally (ex: in Mongolia it is ultimately the responsibility of the men, but also of the women, who fetch the water from what can be miles away) - Hawkins. Due to lack of research regarding these specific communities, water policies are often based on a world-wide standard ...when really it is impossible to apply these effectively to each and every country, let alone community.

Anyway, how is it possible to do anything about this? Can the United Nations Population Fund really go around the world and educate people in rural, nomadic, and isolated communities about how to live and get water so that they can survive? I don't know, but hey this is why geography is so important eh?

Desperate climate times call for oddball measures -- latimes.com

Desperate climate times call for oddball measures -- latimes.com

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The idea of geoengineering seems very exciting, and possible in theory, but I highly doubt that these ideas would include any actual solution. I haven't researched any of these concepts, but every time that we have manipulated the environment in the past (e.g. introducing foreign plant/animal species, leading to these becoming 'invasive' species that kill off all of the local plants/animals) it hasn't gone out quite the way we planned. I can just see us launching a million mirrors into our atmosphere, and I'm picturing tiny chards of glass raining back down on us... Maybe that's a bit extreme, but I still don't like the idea. Even if bioengineering solves the problem of excess carbon dioxide, it has the potential to create a whole slew of new environmental problems. I do like the idea of artificial trees, though I doubt that people would get over the notion that they're 'ugly' (I think they're a lot more beautiful than highways). Small scale geoengineering like this seems more feasible to me since if they don't work, at least they wont change our entire environment.

gendered commercials

the other day someone posed a question in class about whether or not feminist geography exists. Oh it does. I guess that I didn't used to think about these things much, but now that I do I think that spaces are very gendered. It was mentioned in a book I was reading for class, and I've been thinking about it since. One thing that has frustrated me in relation to this is that domestic settings are usually deemed female. This becomes obvious if you just watch TV commercials. All of the household appliance, air freshener, laundry commercials have women in them. For example, all Air wick commercials feature different animated animal women taking care of a million kids, and being excited about their house smelling nice because of a smelly plug in. Their husbands are no where to be found. I looked up all of these online, and found them for Germany, Korea, the US, France, India and with frogs, hamsters, squirrels, owls, octopi, bunnies, skunks, etc. ALL of them featured female animals.. Well, except for the skunk commercial which had a male skunk talking about how his wife got the air freshener. Really? There's also a commercial for Centrum for men that just came out showing objects that have been created 'just for men' including an easy chair, a grille and a power drill. Really? I thought that we were beyond this at least somewhat. Do commercials reflect societal norms? I think that they kind of do. And they are holding us back from integrating gendered space! Kind of a stretch.. and maybe this is outside of the realm of gendered geography but I wanted to rant about it a bit.