Archive - Sep 2014

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Around 90% of the fresh water on the Earth's surface is held in the ice sheet. The only current ice sheets are in Antarctica and Greenland (ice sheets are bigger than ice shelves or alpine glaciers). Greenland ice melting 3 times faster, loss of vast ice sheet. ice (fresh water!) runs away by hundreds of billions of tons a year.

Drinking sewage: solving Singapore's water problem
Australia: Recycled water to be on tap  read more »

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In the North Sea on September 22, 1914, the German submarine U-9 sinks three British cruisers, the Aboukir, the Hogue and the Cressy, in just over one hour.
In the first two months of war, the German High Seas Fleet made little effort to move from its headquarters in Wilhelmshaven. The one naval battle, fought at Heligoland Bight in late August, ended in a convincing British victory, with three German battleships sunk, three more damaged and 1,200 German sailors killed or wounded.

In the wake of Heligoland Bight, Kaiser Wilhelm and the German leadership concluded that the navy should be kept off the open seas, as its best use was as a defensive weapon. As the war continued, Germany’s greatest weapon at sea would not be its light cruisers but its lethal U-boat submarine, which was far more sophisticated than those built by other nations at that time. The typical U-boat was 214 feet long, carried 35 men and 12 torpedoes and could travel underwater for two hours at a time.

The one-sided battle on September 22, which claimed three British cruisers and the lives of 1,400 sailors, alerted the British to the deadly effectiveness of the submarine, which had been generally unrecognized up to that time. In the first few years of World War I, German U-boats took a terrible toll on Allied shipping. By 1917, however, the continued unrestricted U-boat attacks on American vessels traveling to Britain prompted the previously neutral United States to declare war on Germany. The infusion of American ships, troops and arms into World War I, as well as the economic support the U.S. supplied to the Allied powers, would eventually turn the tide of the war against Germany.  read more »

*update 20 Sept 2014* National Geographic: BBC: Scotland's staying put
*update 14 Sept 2014* National Geographic: Scotland’s Independence Vote, Exploring the Country Behind the Clichés

If you ever wondered what the longest usable golf club looks like, now is your chance to catch a glimpse of it in action! Karsten Maas from Denmark has made a super-sized 4.37-m-long (14-ft 5-in) club and has used it to achieve a drives of over 165 metres.

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Prince William, David Beckham and Yao Ming for WildAid

The Duke of Cambridge, David Beckham, and Yao Ming are speaking out to protect rhinos for future generations in this WildAid message. The trio met in London in September 2013 to film two messages that began airing globally, with targeted outreach in China and Vietnam, beginning in January 2014 as part of WildAid's demand reduction campaign and the Royal Foundation's United for Wildlife Collaboration.

“'The End of the Wild' aired last week in China, and it airs on Animal Planet this Autumn. Yao Ming is an incredible ambassador for +WildAid & also now for United for Wildlife!”

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Yao Ming: "Say No To Ivory"
To better understand what’s happening to these species as a result of Asian demand for ivory and rhino horn, Yao Ming traveled to Africa for the first time to come face-to-face with some of the world’s most majestic species - the elephant and the rhino.  read more »