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<ul><li>A team of scientists from the US and China have discovered 28 previously unknown virus groups in samples from the oldest glacial ice on Earth. </li><li>As climate change melts the glacier, it's possible that these pathogens could get released into the atmosphere.</li><li>Even in the best-case scenario, the melting ice would still result in the loss of archives that could hold clues of Earth's climate in the past.</li></ul>It's hard enough to deal with diseases that plague the world today but things could get even worse with global warming. A team of researchers from the US and China has discovered 28 <keyword id="1092325" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="new-virus">new virus</keyword> groups in samples of ice from one of the planet's oldest glaciers. As <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/ibm-believes-its-new-weather-forecasting-system-can-mitigate-shocks-from-climate-change/articleshow/72489643.cms">climate change</a> takes over Earth — melting ice could let those viruses out into the world. 
 
 <div type="image" title="iceap2_edited" msid="73543353" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;A joint research team from the United States and China ventured to the Guliya Ice Cap in Tibet in 2015. They drew a core from the ice that was more than 1,000 feet long, the bottom of which dates back to more than half a million years ago.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>




 The best-case scenario is despite the melting ice, the viruses won't activate. Even so, it would be a grave loss of information. "At a minimum, [ice melt] could lead to the loss of microbial and viral archives that could be diagnostic and informative of past Earth climate regimes," said the study published in the pre-print server <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.03.894675v1">bioRxiv</a>. In the worst-case scenario, the melting ice would release the pathogens — good and bad — into the environment. 
 
 <div type="image" title="icecap3_edited" msid="73543386" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;In 2015, a joint research team from the United States and China ventured to the Guliya Ice Cap in Tibet, and captured the oldest ice core ever drilled outside of the North and South Poles. The core contains more than half a million years of Earth&amp;#39;s climate history.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>





 Ice from 15,000 years ago The scientists took samples from two ice cores from the <keyword id="8630035" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="guliya-ice-cap">Guliya ice cap</keyword> on the northwestern Tibetan Plateau in China dating back nearly 15,000 years. In comparing the two ice-cores, scientists found that the microbes found within them varied drastically. This suggests that the two cores represent two very different climate conditions, according to the <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.03.894675v1">study</a>. 
 
 <div type="image" title="icecap_edited" msid="73543428" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Lonnie Thompson, Distinguished University Professor in the School of Earth Sciences at The Ohio State University, cuts an ice core retrieved from the Guliya Ice Cap in the Kunlun Mountains in Tibet in 2015.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>





 Only 28 of the viruses that the scientists found have never been seen before, however, overall they were able to detect 33 different virus groups. "Glaciers around the world are rapidly shrinking, primarily due to the anthropogenic-enhanced warming of Earth's ocean-atmosphere system, and this will release glacial microbes and viruses that have been trapped and preserved for tens to hundreds of thousands of years," said the study. See also: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/environment/news/you-can-experience-the-end-result-of-climate-change-today-with-virtual-reality/articleshow/72217525.cms">You can experience the end result of climate change today with virtual reality</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/climate-change-causes-australian-mammal-to-go-extinct/articleshow/68081948.cms">Climate change claims its first casualty in world's largest coral reef system</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/ibm-believes-its-new-weather-forecasting-system-can-mitigate-shocks-from-climate-change/articleshow/72489643.cms">IBM believes its new weather forecasting system can mitigate shocks from climate change</a>

A pandora's box of 28 ancient viruses are trapped in glaciers — and climate change could set them free

<ul><li>The <keyword id="8619955" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="yarrabubba-crater">Yarrabubba Crater</keyword> in Australia has been identified as the oldest asteroid impact site in the world dating back 2.229 billion years.</li><li>The age of the crater is nearly half that of Earth.</li><li>The time of the impact coincides with when Earth came out of the deep freeze.</li><li>Scientists believe the impact released nearly half a trillion tons of water vapour into the air triggering one of Earth’s first episodes of global warming.</li></ul>The world’s oldest asteroid struck 2.2 billion years ago and it might have been the reason why the Snowball Earth finally melted. Till now, the oldest asteroid impact on Earth was the <keyword id="8619952" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="vredefort-dome">Vredefort Dome</keyword> in South Africa. However, researchers at <a href="https://news.curtin.edu.au/media-releases/new-research-finds-earths-oldest-asteroid-strike-linked-to-big-thaw/">Curtin University</a> have found that new asteroid impact crater in Australia dates back even further to 2.229 billion years. That’s half as old as the Earth itself. And, it was around the same time that scientists believe Snowball Earth — or the global deep freeze — ended. The discovery, published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13985-7">Nature Communications</a>, states that the Yarrabubba asteroid might have been the reason why and could be the key to unlocking Earth’s frozen past. 
 
 <div type="image" title="crater2_edited" msid="73509397" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Zircon crystal used to date the Yarrabubba impact&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>





 Half a trillion tons of water vapour that ended the glaciers When the asteroid struck Earth’s ice-covered landscape billions of years ago, it vapourised ice into nearly half a trillion tons of water vapour. Since water vapour is an important gas, it may have been enough to tip the scales to trigger global warming. According to Timmons Erickson, lead author of the study, the age of Yarrabubba impact crater coincides with when a series of ancient glaciers disappeared. "Now we know the Yarrabubba crater was made right at the end of what’s commonly referred to as the early Snowball Earth -- a time when the atmosphere and oceans were evolving and becoming more oxygenated and when rocks deposited on many continents recorded glacial conditions," said Erickson. As it crashed into the surface, it produced a 70-kilometre crater. However, its actual impact reached far beyond just the Earth’s surface, to affecting its climate as well. "After the impact, glacial deposits are absent in the rock record for 400 million years. This twist of fate suggests that the large meteorite impact may have influenced global climate," said Nicholas Timms, co-author of the paper. The study supports its correlation between the asteroid impact and the glaciers melting using numerical modelling. According to it, the connection between the effects of large impacts on ice and global climate is difficult to deny. The Yarrabubba crater may only be one of many craters that are yet to be discovered. Erickson told <a href="https://www.space.com/earth-oldest-impact-crater-snowball-earth.html">Space.com</a> that it didn’t even really look like a crater anymore at the time of discovery. An older impact crater may be more difficult to spot since it would have been subjected to even more erosion over the years. See also: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/the-10-biggest-asteroids-that-pose-a-threat-to-earth-in-2020/articleshow/73054066.cms">The 10 biggest asteroids that pose a threat to Earth in 2020</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/nasa-gets-35-million-to-make-sure-asteroids-dont-destroy-earth/articleshow/72996562.cms">NASA gets $35 million to make sure asteroids don't destroy Earth</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/ufologist-claims-the-god-of-chaos-asteroid-will-strike-somewhere-over-europe/articleshow/71537022.cms">Ufologist claims the ‘God of Chaos’ asteroid will strike somewhere over Europe</a>

The world's oldest asteroid struck Earth 2.2 billion years ago triggering one of the first global warming episodes in history

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image">LucasfilmC3PO understands more than six million forms of communication.</div></div></div>In 1977, Star Wars unleashed a brand of Hollywood blockbuster that had never been seen before. It wowed audiences worldwide and became a modern classic.Almost 40 years (and 350 films, books, TV shows, comics and videogames) later, the Star Wars galaxy holds permanent real estate in the pop cultural mass imagination.In anticipation of Episode VII: The Force Awakens, we've done some intergalactic etymology to discover the origins of the character names, cultures and languages from that very familiar galaxy far, far away.<h2>Influences</h2>To understand where Star Wars stands in the pop culture pantheon, we must first acknowledge the stories that influenced the films' creator, George Lucas. Like most boys growing up in 1950s and 60s America, Lucas was raised on Westerns, campy sci-fi serials like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, epic <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> fiction novels like Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars and Frank Herbert's Dune, and Japanese samurai films. These influences are clearly visible in Lucas' films - from the good guys dressed in white and bad guys dressed in black, to the desert planets, robots, laser guns and spaceships, to the venerable sword-wielding mercenaries following Taoist philosophy.Tying these disparate cultural elements together is the work of mythologist Joseph Campbell, whose book, The Hero with the Thousand Faces, claims that all cultures throughout time have told and retold the same essential myths. Reading Campbell's book helped Lucas build his characters and story on time-tested archetypes and mythic structures. With Star Wars, Lucas set out to retell the timeless "hero's journey" myth, but in a very new way.<h2>Name Origins</h2>Big themes like good versus evil, light versus dark, and nature versus technology are woven into every detail of the Star Wars universe, even the characters' names:Luke Skywalker: Taken at face value, the name Luke - which derives from the Greek Loukas meaning "a man from Lucania" (a region in Italy) - has no mythic undertones. However, it also resembles the Greek leukos meaning light - quite significant when one battles the dark side. It's also hard to avoid noticing the similarity to George Lucas' own name; perhaps it was his way of putting himself in his hero's shoes. In early drafts of the Star Wars script, Luke's surname was Starkiller. Thank goodness Lucas replaced it with the much more poetic and evocative Skywalker.Princess Leia Organa: Leia's name sounds a lot like Princess Dejah Thoris from the John Carter of Mars novels written by Edgar Rice Burroughs in the 1930s. This is probably not a coincidence considering that young George Lucas grew up on these sci-fi stories. Leia's surname, Organa, reflects that in the conflict between the natural world and the evil mechanized Empire, she stands firmly on the side of nature.Han Solo: Continuing with mythological ur-names, Han is an archaic form of John (or Hans, Jan, Jean…). The pop-culture precedent for the surname Solo is probably Napoleon Solo, a debonaire spy from the 1960s American TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.Chewbacca: The inspiration for Han Solo's right-hand Wookie was actually Lucas' dog, an Alaskan Malamute named Indiana (yes, he also inspired that character). And where does the name Chewbacca come from? We don't know for sure, but it is suspiciously similar to the Russian word for dog: ??????.Jedi: The name for the order of knights who protect the galaxy from evil likely has more than one source. Sci-fi geeks will likely claim that the word was inspired by the lords of Barsoom in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars novels, who are addressed by the honorific Jed or Jeddak.On the other hand, many film buffs contend that Jedi is a shout-out to Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa. Kurosawa's biggest hits stateside were his samurai films, and the Japanese word for this kind of costume drama is jidai-geki. One could consider this a coincidence if it weren't for the fact that Lucas has repeatedly cited Kurosawa as an influence. He's even stated that the two bickering peasants in Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress were his inspiration for R2-D2 and C-3PO.Obi Wan Kenobi: Like the word Jedi, this is another homage to the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa and to Japanese culture. An "obi' is the sash used to tie a kimono, "ken" is Japanese for sword and "wan" sounds somewhat like the Japanese honorific "san".Still not convinced that Obi Wan's name is a nod to Kurosawa? Well prepare to be trivia slammed: before casting Sir Alec Guinness in the role, Lucas approached Japanese superstar Toshiro Mifune to play Obi Wan. Mifune starred in many of Kurosawa's jidai-geki, including The Hidden Fortress and Seven Samurai. When Mifune turned down the offer, Lucas offered him the part of Darth Vader, but the actor was simply not interested in being in a "film for children."Darth Vader: the most prominent rumor about the origin of Vader's name is that it's Dutch for "dark father." However, in Dutch that would actually be Donker Vader which is the least scary name for a Sith lord ever. However, Lucas himself claimed that the name is a combination of two phrases that seethe evil: "death water" and "dark father." This doesn't mean that the vader-father connection was deliberate foreshadowing. In early drafts of the Empire Strikes Back script, Vader was NOT Luke's father, so Lucas couldn't have had that planned when he named the character years earlier.Another theory, if the naming convention of the other Sith is any indication - Sidious (Insidious), Maul, Grievous - Vader might be short for "invader," thus "Dark/Death Invader."Yoda: The origin of Yoda's name is shrouded in mystery, but there are two plausible sources:yoddha, the Sanskrit word for warrior, or the Hebrew yodea which means one who knows. Two interesting theories these are, hmm?R2-D2: During a late night editing session of his previous film, American Graffiti, Lucas overheard sound editor Walter Murch ask an assistant for "Reel 2, Dialog Track 2." Murch, being super efficient, abbreviated that to "R-2-D-2." Lucas, who was in the middle of the Star Wars script at the time, commented that R2-D2 would make a great name and promptly integrated it into the script.Droid™: In the parlance of the Star Wars galaxy, "droid" means any robot, whether it's shaped like a trashcan or a person. Here on Earth, it's easy to guess that "droid" is an abridgement of "android," an anthropomorphic robot. Not so simple, however, is the legal status of the word. Right before Verizon released their Droid line of smartphones in 2009, Lucasfilm successfully trademarked the word "droid," not as a friendly robot that follows you around, but as a "wireless communications device." As a result, Verizon pays Lucasfilm a license fee to use the word. Clever, Lucasfilm, very clever.Jawa: These diminutive desert traders share their name with the oldest urban settlement in Jordan. Located in the remote Eastern Jordanian desert, Jawa was built over 5000 years ago.Ewok: Everyone's favorite arboreal space teddy bears were named after the Miwok, one of the indigenous tribes of Northern California. The Endor forest scenes in Return of the Jediwere filmed in indigenous Miwok territory.<h2>The Languages</h2>Unlike the systematic languages created for The Lord of the Rings and Star Trek, the languages in Star Wars do not have functional grammar, vocabulary and syntax. Instead, Star Wars' sound designer Ben Burtt approached the invention of alien languages in much the same way as the rest of the films' sound effects. They are evocative, atmospheric and merely hint at fully-developed fictional worlds. Instead of constructing alien languages from scratch, he riffed on real indigenous languages from all over the world:Huttese: The most-spoken fictional language in the films, Huttese was based on the Incan language Quechua. Burtt mostly took the sounds of words as a jumping off point, but some Quechua words did make it into Huttese (although he ignored their original meanings). Huttese is predominantly heard on Tatooine and is spoken by many characters including Greedo, and Jabba the Hutt and his entourage.Jawaese: The language spoken by the Jawas was inspired by Zulu, as well as a few other African languages. After he recorded actors speaking the new invented words, Burtt sped up the tape to create the Jawas' signature high-pitched voices.Ewokese: The language spoken by the Ewoks is actually a pidgin of several Mongolic languages including Tibetan, Nepali and Kalmyk.<h2>The locations</h2>The Star Wars films may not actually be galactic, but they are undoubtedly international. Filming locations include:<ul><li>Tunisia (Tatooine) Tatooine was named after Tataouine, a real town near the filming locations in Tunisia.</li><li>Death Valley, California (Tatooine)</li><li>The United Kingdom and Australia (all interior sets)</li><li>Tikal, Guatemala (Yavin IV)</li><li>Hardangerjøkulen Glacier, Norway (Hoth)</li><li>Redwood National Park, California (Endor)</li><li>Palace of Caserta and Lake Como, Italy (Naboo)</li><li>Plaza de España, Spain (Naboo)</li><li>Mount Etna, Italy (Mustafar)</li><li>Grindelwald, Switzerland (Alderaan)</li><li>Phang Nga Bay, Thailand and Guilin, China (Kashyyyk)</li></ul>This post originally appeared on <a href="https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/star-words-language-trivia-from-a-galaxy-far-far-away">Babbel's web site</a> and is republished here with permission. <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/eyelid-surgery-in-south-korea-2015-11">Why Korean parents are having their kids get plastic surgery before college</a></h3> <div> <div> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="N3anZreDpn-2nQvRx1Ucqnt93GqH8mTZ" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> </div> </div> </div>

The real-world origins of the names and languages in 'Star Wars'

<ul class="summary-list"><li>In Montana, 16 young residents are suing the state over its support of the fossil-fuel industry.</li><li>They argue Montana is violating their right to a clean environment as laid out in its constitution. </li><li>The suit is the first constitutional case on climate change to go to trial in the US.</li></ul>When it's too smoky to be outdoors near his Montana home, Badge Busse gets depressed.Badge, 15, is named after the Badger-Two Medicine wilderness area adjacent to Glacier National Park in northwest Montana. The Badger-Two Medicine has been the focus of a <a href="https://newsletter.businessinsider.com/click/31799401.13494/aHR0cHM6Ly9tb250YW5hZnJlZXByZXNzLm9yZy8yMDIyLzExLzAyL2JhZGdlci10d28tbWVkaWNpbmUtbGVhc2UtYXBwZWFsLz91dG1fbWVkaXVtPW5ld3NsZXR0ZXI/61d1df3fda927262960fbe9dB2c3f5f1a" target="_blank" rel="noopener">40-year battle</a> involving lawsuits over oil and gas leases the federal government issued in the early 1980s.Now, Badge himself is part of a legal fight. He, along with 15 other young people, contend that Montana's support of the fossil-fuel industry is <a href="https://newsletter.businessinsider.com/click/31799401.13494/aHR0cHM6Ly9hcG5ld3MuY29tL2FydGljbGUveW91dGgtY2xpbWF0ZS10cmlhbC1tb250YW5hLWJlZTQxMTFmZTM4ZTJjZGRhN2MxY2I0MTc3Y2Q1NThmP3V0bV9tZWRpdW09bmV3c2xldHRlcg/61d1df3fda927262960fbe9dB914a5347" target="_blank" rel="noopener">depriving them of the clean environment</a> they're entitled to under the state's constitution. Badge testified on Tuesday as part of the landmark trial that wildfires and other disturbances exacerbated by a changing climate have made it harder for him to do the things he loves most, including fishing and hunting Hungarian partridge, among other animals, with his family. "It's smoky outside and all you want to do is just, like, lay down on your bed and cry. It's super depressing and I just — it's very hard to deal with," Badge said in a Helena courtroom where the trial, which began Monday, is expected to play out over two weeks. The trial comes little more than a month after the Supreme Court <a href="https://newsletter.businessinsider.com/click/31799401.13494/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucmV1dGVycy5jb20vYnVzaW5lc3MvZW5lcmd5L3VzLXN1cHJlbWUtY291cnQtcmVidWZmcy1leHhvbi1jaGV2cm9uLWFwcGVhbHMtY2xpbWF0ZS1saXRpZ2F0aW9uLTIwMjMtMDQtMjQvP3V0bV9tZWRpdW09bmV3c2xldHRlcg/61d1df3fda927262960fbe9dB97d71099" target="_blank" rel="noopener">turned down appeals</a> from oil and gas companies that were hoping to prevent climate lawsuits brought by local governments from being heard in state courts, where damage awards are likely to be higher than in federal courts. The decision could allow at least some of about two dozen such cases to proceed. Michael Gerrard, a professor at Columbia Law School, told Insider there's broad agreement that the ideal fix to the environmental challenges brought by a hotter planet would be strong government action. But, he said, divided government in the US and abroad means legal measures will have to be a part of the tool kit for dealing with the climate crisis. <div type="image" title="Young plaintiffs in a Montana courtroom confer with their lawyers" height="3815" width="5088" msid="101027269" hostid="261"></div>"We are so far behind where we need to be in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions that every lawful tactic needs to be pursued. And litigation is certainly one of them," Gerrard said. The Montana suit, Held v. Montana, is remarkable for being the first constitutional case on climate change to reach trial in the US. Gerrard said Columbia's <a href="https://newsletter.businessinsider.com/click/31799401.13494/aHR0cHM6Ly9jbGltYXRlLmxhdy5jb2x1bWJpYS5lZHUvP3V0bV9tZWRpdW09bmV3c2xldHRlcg/61d1df3fda927262960fbe9dB3f37f6aa" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sabin Center for Climate Change Law</a>, which he founded and runs, has documented about 2,200 climate cases around the world; about 70% of those have been in the US. But trials, he noted, are "exceedingly rare." Plaintiff Mica Kantor, 15, told the court he'd run numerous races, including half-marathons, near his home in Missoula. But now, unlike when he was younger, he has to use an inhaler to help his breathing and that going outside when it's smoky hurts his throat and lungs. A victory in court for the young Montana residents, the oldest of whom is 22, could show that where there's a state constitutional right to a clean environment, that's violated by unrestricted fossil-fuel emissions, Gerrard said. "It's putting science on trial. It's highlighting the effect that climate change has on young people."Montana's constitution, which was ratified in 1972, established the right to a "<a href="https://leg.mt.gov/bills/mca/title_0000/article_0020/part_0010/section_0030/0000-0020-0010-0030.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">clean and healthful environment</a>." Badge said during his testimony that lower water levels in rivers had made it harder for him to fish with his family. Before leaving the stand Tuesday, Badge replied to a question from his lawyer about whether he felt a sense of urgency concerning climate action: "Yeah, it's kind of a now-or-never situation."

16 young people are suing the state of Montana over the climate crisis &mdash; one resident says the wildfire smoke makes him want to lie in bed and cry

<ul><li>We are losing <keyword id="59606" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="arctic" source="Orion">Arctic</keyword> <keyword id="8688" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="sea" source="Orion">sea</keyword> <keyword id="51841" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="ice" source="Orion">ice</keyword> at a rate of nearly 13% per decade, and the oldest and thickest ice in the Arctic has declined by an astounding 95% in the last 30 years.</li><li>A study by researchers at the Finnish Meteorological Institute has concluded that the Arctic is heating four times faster than the rest of the planet.</li><li>The State of the Global Climate in 2021 report from the World Meteorological Organisation indicates that the sea levels are rising faster than average along almost the entire Indian coast.</li></ul>The polar ice caps are melting due to climate change caused by global warming. We are losing Arctic sea ice at a rate of nearly 13% per decade, and the oldest and thickest ice in the Arctic has declined by an astounding 95% in the last 30 years, as per NASA climate change. If greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, the Arctic could be ice-free in the summer by 2040, according to the World Economic Forum. However, what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic. Globally, sea ice loss has far-reaching consequences, causing tsunamis, increase in sea level, storms etc. Global warming has also made Antarctic glaciers critically unstable, as they are approaching a point where it would be impossible to stop or reverse their flow into the sea and cause a 50 cm sea level rise worldwide, according to a NASA-funded study. Experts say that if there is still any doubt about the reality of climate change, one needs to look no further than the planet's coldest regions for proof that the Earth is warming at unprecedented rates. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="The Arctic is heating up, fast" comment="subhead" text="The Arctic is heating up, fast">The Arctic is heating up, fast</cmsannotation> According to a study by researchers at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, published in the Communications Earth &amp; Environment journal, the Arctic is heating four times faster than the rest of the planet. According to experts, the mass melting of sea ice, permafrost and ice caps in the Arctic – widely regarded by polar scientists as the Earth's refrigerator due to its role in regulating global temperatures – is hard evidence of global warming. The Arctic has experienced two to four times faster temperature increases than the rest of the world over the past four decades. The Arctic amplification – a phenomenon where the Arctic warms up faster than the rest of the planet due to temperature differences in the poles – occurs when white sea ice thins or disappears, allowing dark ocean or land surfaces to absorb more heat from the sun and release that energy back into the atmosphere. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Impact on India" comment="subhead" text="Impact on India">Impact on India</cmsannotation> The State of the Global Climate in 2021 report from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), published in May this year indicates that sea levels are rising faster than average along almost the entire Indian coast. The global rate of sea level rise between 2013 and 2021 was 4.5 millimetres annually. This rate was more than twice as high as witnessed between 1993 and 2002. The rapid melting of ice from the ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctic is the leading cause of rising sea levels. The levels have risen despite the occurrence of the La Niña phenomenon – where rainfall is diverted to land, thereby lowering the sea level – in 2021. Images from the Landsat satellite operated by United States’ NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) show that sea levels have been rising in the Sunderbans delta for the past 20 years at the rate of 30 mm per year, with a 12% loss in the shoreline. This is more than six times the average level for the world, and it has already resulted in the eviction of about 1.5 million residents of the delta. The rise in sea levels and intense cyclones will make places like the Sundarbans uninhabitable, leading to a massive inland migration of people and other socio-economic issues if global warming is not kept below the 1.5°C mark as agreed to by countries under the Paris Agreement.

Why the melting of the Arctic ice matters to India

<ul class="summary-list"><li>There's no set definition of "worldschooling" because there isn't only one way to do it.</li><li>Parents who worldschool their kids say experiential learning is key to this type of schooling.</li></ul>Colleen Mariotti, originally from Seattle, sold all her belongings in <a href="https://livology.com/about-livology/">2013</a> and applied for dual citizenship in Italy. She and her family relocated there with the intention of starting in Italy and then seeing the world.After playing at the park, her kids asked to attend an Italian public school. Mariotti was unsure but trusted her kids. She discovered that the process of enrolling wasn't hard.She listened one evening as they described their first day. They'd followed their teachers to a finely laid dining hall for a multicourse lunch. For an hour they ate and talked. Though her kids spoke no Italian, their classmates still engaged them. The meal opened doors and minds, and the school would remain a positive memory for years to come.Mariotti is part of a group of so-called worldschoolers, a subset of a growing group of digital nomads. The digital-nomad lifestyle has been <a href="https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210615-is-the-great-digital-nomad-workforce-actually-coming">gaining popularity for years</a> but spiked during the pandemic. By one estimate, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinecastrillon/2022/07/17/why-the-digital-nomad-lifestyle-is-on-the-rise/?sh=5874a1904934">Forbes reported</a>, the number of digital nomads in the US rose by 50%, to about 11 million, in 2020.Worldschooling is a digital-nomad lifestyle for families. And for many, this lifestyle began long before the pandemic.<h2>You can adapt it to your needs</h2><a href="https://www.worldschoolingcentral.com/">Worldschooling</a> has no set definition because there's no single way to do it. Some families travel nonstop, becoming digital nomads like the Mariottis. Others worldschool from a base, renting out their house while they travel, or travel only part time.Travel is just one component of the philosophy. There's no set way to educate kids on the road either, but families share a belief that kids can learn directly from the world around them.<div type="image" title="Colleen Mariotti kids in Italy" height="1435" width="1914" msid="93776556" hostid="261" sizebytes="240756"></div>Experiential learning is key to worldschooling. Study history where it happened. Learn cultures, languages, and more directly from others. Visit castles, pyramids, rainforests, temples, deserts, and glaciers as part of a global classroom. And through the power of the internet, develop friendships on multiple continents.Many families on the road primarily homeschool their kids or use online curricula. Others hire teachers to travel with them or hire tutors in each nation they visit. Others join "hubs" of worldschoolers, where kids can learn together. And others enroll their kids in schools around the world.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/bagspackedfamily">Kelly Malahy Rusch</a>, a parent of three elementary-school-aged kids, prefers international schools to public ones. Her children have attended schools in India, the United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia. Rusch and her husband offset the tuition by teaching at the schools themselves — the parents learn the culture while the kids gain an international perspective for free.<h2>There are challenges</h2>While some families who worldschool spend months or years in one location to immerse themselves, others move from place to place to experience living in as many nations as possible. For those fast travelers, making friends and establishing routines can be a struggle.<a href="https://playlearnthrive.com/?fbclid=IwAR1747g0WjaLpe7haFbivUU0VUeCZBYOml1VK_4fc0ZbiY04ZXZ1dj8xJ8s">Alanna Gallo</a>, a former public-school teacher in the US, left in search of a better educational system for her own children. But she said she withdrew her students from a school they attended in the Dominican Republic after a week over concerns that they were unsupervised. Then, while they were still settling in, two of her children became ill, and she had to wrestle with healthcare in a foreign environment. She found a forest school her kids thrived in, and, later, a Montessori school in Greece.With no mortgage or utility costs — and usually far less stuff — the cost of living for some worldschoolers <a href="https://www.worlddata.info/cost-of-living.php">can be low</a>, especially compared with owning a home in a wealthy nation such as the US.Mariotti has been traveling for eight years. In an ashram in Indonesia, her children volunteered as English teachers. Her oldest, age 12, said: "I think there are teachers around every corner of this world. I have never learned more from anyone than I have from these kids, and I was the one who was supposed to be teaching." The children attended a full-moon ceremony on their final day in Bali.For these kids, and many others, the world truly is their classroom.Christopher Mannino is an at-home dad, <a href="https://www.christophermannino.com/">author</a>, and <a href="https://www.clippings.me/cmannino">freelance writer</a>. He writes fantasy books for children and adults and lives in Delaware.

Some parents are choosing to 'worldschool' their kids, traveling from country to country in the process

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Anthropologists found 60 fossilized human footprints in New Mexico that date back 23,000 years. </li><li>The finding reveals humans <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/people-in-north-america-15000-years-earlier-than-archaeologists-thought-2020-7">occupied North America thousands of years earlier</a> than we thought - and thrived on the continent during the last <keyword id="12161803" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="ice-age" source="Orion">ice age</keyword>.</li></ul>A new discovery offers definitive evidence that humans were in North America far earlier than archaeologists previously thought - a whopping 7,000 years earlier.Fossil footprints found on the shore of an ancient lake bed in New Mexico's White Sands National Park date as far back as 23,000 years ago, making them the oldest ever found in North America. That timing means humans occupied southern parts of the continent during the peak of the final ice age, which upends our previous understanding of when and how they moved south.The previous idea was that the first people to occupy North America crossed a land bridge that existed between modern-day Siberia and Alaska during the last ice age, between 26,500 and 19,000 ago. According to that theory, they would have had to settle near the Arctic because ice sheets covering Canada made it impossible for them to go south. Then later, once these glaciers melted between 16,000 and 13,500 years ago, the migration toward South America began. This new finding, however, "definitively places humans in North America at time when the ice sheet curtains were very firmly closed," Sally Reynolds, a paleoecologist at Bournemouth University in England and co-author of the new study, told Insider.<div type="image" title="white sands footprints" height="2743" width="3435" msid="86467850" hostid="261"></div>So most likely, Reynolds said, humans migrated south in multiple waves, and one of those was before the last ice age. Those early people may have even sailed down the Pacific coast. "Then more came down after the ice receded," Reynolds said.The <a href="https://eurekalert.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=394dac0d2e831bfd2ca7fc3b5&amp;id=e78af6d569&amp;e=547fa823dc7fa823dc">finding</a> was published Thursday in the journal <keyword id="11896083" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="science" source="Orion">Science</keyword>, and the study also describes nearby tracks found from mammoths, dire wolves, and giant ground sloths - prey for ancient humans.<h2>The oldest known footprints in the Americas</h2><div type="image" title="white sands footprints" height="4008" width="2802" msid="86467852" hostid="261"></div>Reynolds' team found 60 human footprints between 21,000 and 23,000 years old. The researchers estimated the tracks' age by dating microscopic seeds from an aquatic plant found in layers of lake sediment that sandwiched the prints."It's unequivocal evidence," Reynolds said. "The layers go seeds, footprints, seeds."The footprints are now the oldest in the Americas, taking over from <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-discover-oldest-human-footprint-in-americas-2019-4">a 15,600-year-old footprint found in Chile</a> a decade ago.Most of the tracks belonged to teenagers and children, the team found, possibly indicating the youngsters played in the area while adults hunted and gathered.Reynolds said that before this finding, the earliest estimate as to when humans started occupying North America was 16,000 years ago.The only clue that people might have arrived earlier is a set of stone tools and artifacts found in remote Mexican cave. Archaeologists estimated that sediment ensconcing those artifacts was 32,000 years old, but that's not a trustworthy measure, Reynolds said. Artifacts can migrate up and down through sediment layers over time."Footprints, by contrast, are fixed on the landscape," Reynolds said. <h2>Humans could have traveled south by boat</h2> <div type="image" title="white sands footprints" height="3995" width="3000" msid="86467854" hostid="261"></div>Reynolds said it's not yet clear how, exactly, humans traveled to the White Sands site - though there are several leading theories.One suggests they traveled down the west coast via an ice-free corridor of land. Another proposes that they <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/people-in-north-america-15000-years-earlier-than-archaeologists-thought-2020-7">came by boat</a>, possibly sailing from modern-day Russia or Japan and then expanding south by hugging the Pacific Coast. Reynolds said she also thinks it's possible our ancestors might have crossed the continent then sailed down the Atlantic coast, before trekking to New Mexico. "There's this hovering question mark over the role of their seafaring skills," she said.<h2>Ancient humans in North America hunted giant sloths</h2><h2><div type="image" title="An artist’s reconstruction, based on recently discovered footprints, of prehistoric humans in present-day New Mexico hunting a giant ground sloth." height="575" width="1023" msid="86467856" hostid="261"></div></h2>This isn't the first remarkable discovery to come from the White Sands site."Its value goes far, far beyond the date of these new footprints," Reynolds said. Three years ago, her team <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.aar7621">uncovered a different set of human and animal tracks</a> at the site dating back to about 15,500 years ago. Those footprints revealed an epic battle between predator and prey: A human was stalking a giant sloth."The human was walking right behind it," Reynolds said, adding, "and the sloth is absolutely not liking it."<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/giant-sloths-hunted-by-humans-bones-2019-3">Giant ground sloths</a> went extinct some 12,000 years ago. Around the same time, up to 90% of all large-bodied animals in the world, including mastodons, prehistoric horses, and ancient giant armadillos, also went extinct.Many archaeologists think that early humans in the Americas played an outsized role in that mass extinction there, given that it happened within a few millennia of their arrival."Humans show up and megafauna start dying," Reynolds said. "It seems like an obvious cause and effect relationship."

Newly discovered fossil footprints show humans were in North America thousands of years earlier than we thought

Over the last week, a wildfire near Yosemite National Park in <keyword id="2379" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="California">California</keyword> has <a href="http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_details_info?incident_id=889" target="_blank">burned 192,737 acres</a>, or about 300 square miles. That's an area roughly 10 times the size of Manhattan. <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/08/29/rim_fire_time_lapse_video_yosemite_national_park_releases_video_as_fire.html" target="_blank">Slate's</a> Josh Voorhees directed us toward a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97BrYoq1ly0#t=19" target="_blank">time-lapse video</a> of the Rim <keyword id="28762" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="fire">fire</keyword> posted by park officials on Wednesday.
The juxtaposition of towering sequoias — some of the biggest and oldest trees in the world — being ravaged by bright orange flames is mesmerizing to watch and devastating to think about.
"The first part of this video is from the Crane Flat Helibase," officials write. "The second half of the video is from Glacier Point, showing Yosemite Valley, and how little the smoke from the fire has impacted the Valley."
Watch the video below:

A Time-Lapse Video Of California's Massive Wildfire Is Beautiful And Deeply Disturbing

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>Scientists have discovered that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/greenland-approaching-threshold-of-irreversible-melting-2019-1">melting in Greenland</a> and Antarctica is occurring much faster than they previously thought. This year, the extent of Arctic sea ice was the second-lowest ever recorded.</li><li>Polar ice melt contributes to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/greenland-approaching-threshold-of-irreversible-melting-2019-1">sea-level rise</a> and also leads the planet to heat up faster, since ice reflects sunlight back into space.</li><li>An organization called Ice911 has proposed <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/geoengineering-how-to-reverse-climate-change-2019-4">scattering tiny, glass spheres</a> across parts of the Arctic to reflect more sunlight back into space and slow the thaw.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul>The Arctic is melting at unprecedented rates: Greenland's ice is <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sea-level-rise-3-feet-in-80-years-un-report-2019-9">disappearing six times faster</a>&#xa0;than it was four decades ago. In August, the ice sheet lost 60 billion tons <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02653-x">in just 5 days</a> of summer thaw.Over the last four decades, we've lost <a href="https://www.essoar.org/doi/10.1002/essoar.10500214.1">75% of the volume of Arctic ice</a>. The current extent of the sea ice is the second-lowest it's been since scientists started keeping track in 1979.In addition to raising sea levels, this melting significantly contributes to climate change because Arctic ice reflects sunlight into space (in part because sea ice is bright and white). So less ice means less heat leaving the planet, which in turn leads more ice to melt. It's a vicious cycle.A nonprofit called Ice911 offers a potential solution to this ominous feedback loop: The group has proposed blanketing key parts of the Arctic in millions of hollow, glass microspheres to form a protective layer that reflects sunlight and insulates melting ice."We're an awfully creative species, and we need to slow the climate-change clock," Leslie Field, the founder of Ice911, told Business Insider. "Technology like this gives us time to act."<h2>Tiny silica beads at work</h2>The tiny spheres Ice911 has developed look more like grains of sand than beads. They're manufactured from silica, a compound made of silicon and oxygen, because the material is abundant in the natural world and harmless to humans and animals.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div>Field described the microspheres as "small, fine, white beach sand" that floats. In a sense, the material is a lot like snow.&#xa0; &#xa0;The reflective beads stick to ice and water on contact, and their chemical composition ensures they don't attract oil-based pollutants. Simulations done by Ice911 suggest that using the technology to restore ice reflectivity could help lower temperatures by 1.5 degrees Celsius over a large part of the northern Arctic.But so far, the technology is still in the field-test phase. Field said Ice911 started with "a very small experiment in buckets" on the deck of her own home, then conducted small tests at a lake in the Sierra Nevada mountains and a pond in Minnesota.&#xa0;In the last two years, Field and her colleagues have brought the microspheres to the Arctic, where they spread the material over a frozen lake near Utqiaġvik (Barrow), Alaska. The results, some of which were reported <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018EF000820">in a May 2018 study</a>, suggest the silica beads did indeed increase ice reflectivity and thickness.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div>Field doesn't want to blanket all 1.6 million square miles of Arctic sea ice with the beads, though. Instead, her team is using climate models to pinpoint strategic parts of the Arctic where the microspheres could have maximum impact.One of these areas, she said, is the Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard - a hotspot of melting. That region is warming <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/07/oceans-demise-the-end-of-the-arctic-as-we-know-it">nearly four times faster</a> than the global average."This is where ice floes come to die, and the cemetery is filling faster each year," climate physicist Till Wagner <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/07/oceans-demise-the-end-of-the-arctic-as-we-know-it">told The Guardian earlier this year</a>.Field thinks that in three years, Ice911's technology could be deployed to curb this floe demise. But she estimates it would cost about $5 billion to scatter the microspheres on a meaningful scale.&#xa0;"When you look at that cost, it's big," she said. "But the cost of doing nothing is far greater."For now, she said, Ice911 still needs to conduct more tests and get proper permissions from governments and environmental groups before considering any large-scale deployment.<h2>Shrinking Arctic sea ice</h2>Every September, Arctic sea ice hits its minimum extent. Since the 1980s, that minimum has decreased by about 13% per decade, and the decline is accelerating, as the NASA animation below shows.&#xa0;In 1979, Arctic sea ice spanned about 2.7 million square miles (7 million square kilometers). By last month, the extent had dropped to 1.7 million square miles (4.3 million square kilometers). According to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XKYdSqf2ss">NASA data</a>, this year has tied 2007 for the second-lowest sea ice extent on record. The worst year was 2012, when the ice shrank to under 1 million square miles (2.6 million square kilometers).<a href="https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/09/18/window-save-arctic-sea-ice-rapidly-closing/">Researchers at the European Space Agency</a> have warned that the current rate of carbon emissions means we could see an ice-free Arctic in just decades.Field describes polar ice as Earth's "heat shield." The Arctic's oldest, thickest sea ice lifts the heaviest load in terms of reflecting sunlight, but that's what's thawing fastest. About 95% of this bright, multi-year-old sea ice <a href="https://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card">disappeared in 2018</a>.&#xa0;That's the ice that Ice911 wants to save.&#xa0;<h2>Field says her invention is a climate solution, not geoengineering</h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div>Field, who has 55 patents, said she first pinpointed ice reflectivity as the climate "lever" she wanted to pull in 2006, after watching Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." The film explains that the loss of reflectivity in the Arctic had contributed to one-fifth of global temperature rise.Since that documentary came out, researchers' warnings about the consequences of climate change have gotten much more dire. That has led some scientists and politicians, like Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, to consider <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/geoengineering-how-to-reverse-climate-change-2019-4">geoengineering</a> technologies that could essentially <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/geoengineering-atmosphere-clouds-harvard-2018-4">hack our climate</a>.Geoengineering strategies range from developing facilities that suck carbon dioxide out of the air on the safer end of the spectrum, to deliberately injecting reflective chemicals into the atmosphere to send more sunlight back into space on the more extreme side.&#xa0;Read More: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/geoengineering-how-to-reverse-climate-change-2019-4">We're altering the climate so severely that we'll soon face apocalyptic consequences. Here are 11 last-ditch ways we could hack the planet to reverse that trend.</a>Field and her team referred to Ice911's technology as "localized, reversible geoengineering" in their 2018 paper, but she emphasized that the beads are "different than what has come to be known as geoengineering primarily."Instead, she said, Ice911's microspheres are "working to rebuild something that was, until recently, already there, not taking the climate on a new path."<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div>Plus, given that the beads are made of material that's "darn close to ubiquitous in the environment," Field added, she sees "a defensible distinction" between her organization's approach and efforts to, say, inject chemicals into the atmosphere.&#xa0;<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03036-4#ref-CR2">A 2018 article</a> in Nature noted that geoengineering Arctic and Antarctic glaciers could buy us crucial time to address climate change. But Field was quick to note that Ice911's work should not be seen as a sufficient solution on its own."I don't want this to be an excuse for coal mines, I don't want people to say, 'We don't have to change a thing because the engineers will fix it,'" she said.But given that polar melting is <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sea-level-rise-3-feet-in-80-years-un-report-2019-9">on track to raise seas 3 feet by 2100</a> and threatens to displace hundreds of millions of people, Field added, the need for Ice911's technology is now "urgent and demonstrable."<div></div>

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