glacier

It may look like the scene in "Star Wars" when Luke Skywalker and his comrades are flying through the channel in the Death Star, hoping to blow it up and strike a victory for the Rebellion. But it's not. It may be even cooler than that.

NASA has released a simulation video showing the results of what's called "Operation IceBridge," an attempt by the space agency to do an up-close-and-personal investigation of a mammoth crack in Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier.… Read more

From 2003 to 2010, NASA satellites systematically measured all of Earth's melting glacial ice--the results added up to 4.3 trillion tons of water and a global sea level rise of half an inch.

Put in perspective, that's enough ice to bury the entire U.S. 1.5-feet deep.

These calculations are detailed in a new study released today by a team of scientists at the University of Colorado. The scientists used satellite measurements from the NASA Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), which launched in 2002 and focused on how melting ice from glaciers and ice caps … Read more

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, Mont.--I'm kind of awestruck. For four years I've been doing CNET Road Trip projects, and every time I've hit a new thousand-mile milestone, I've stopped, photographed the odometer and the surroundings, and then blogged about the spot.

In almost every case, that new set of zeroes on the odometer has come at some nondescript location. There have been a couple cases where it happened near something incredible, but I'll be honest: I've cheated a little bit and, say, driven back and forth across a parking lot to have the milestone … Read more

Note: All information in this story, unless otherwise noted, is from the National Park Service's pamphlets on and in-park signs about climate change and Glacier National Park.

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, Mont.--The small graphics on a single sign, deep inside this incredible natural treasure says just about all you need to know about the drastic effects of rapid and intense climate change on the park and what's inside it.

"With warmer temperatures and changes to the water cycle, Glacier National Park will be glacier-free by 2030," the sign reads. "These changes will also have consequences … Read more

So we talked about a lot of serious news today including the Justin.tv suicide, the new Google wiki search, and the unauthorized access of Barack Obama's Verizon calling records. But really, Rafe's description of Net-connected Deer is what I'll remember about this episode. How about you?

19-year-old Commits Suicide on Justin.tv http://newteevee.com/2008/11/20/19-year-old-commits-suicide-on-justintv/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10104716-93.html

SearchWiki: Make search your own http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki-make-search-your-own.html http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_to_turn_search_into_wik.php http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081120-roll-your-own-search-results-with-googles-new-searchwiki.html… Read more

If you work in icy storage warehouses or happen to do most of your computing in an igloo, you may want to know that Glacier Computer, a designer and distributor of rugged industrial computers, is out with a heated touch screen for its Everest line.

The warmth solves a challenge that arises when the computer is being transported back and forth between sub-zero environments and areas above freezing--in and out of a freezer, for example.

"This activity causes condensation and then a refreezing of that condensation, making the screen unusable by the operator," explains Dan Poisson, director of … Read more

Correction at 3:30 p.m. PST Thursday: Blame my Rust Belt ignorance. The Ohio river that burned is the Cuyahoga.

SAN FRANCISCO--I've been spending some time at the the American Geophysical Union conference here, and I've had a recurring thought: When it comes to apocalyptic predictions, geophysicists have the Book of Revelations beat, hands down.

Sometime in the last few years, the idea that global warming is a reality and that it's caused in large measure by people has finally started sinking in. But perhaps because of the remaining skepticism, and more likely because of the … Read more

How many naked people can you fit on a shrinking glacier? According to a report by Reuters, New York photographer Spencer Tunick plans to find out next month when he teams up with Greenpeace to shoot another in his long series of nude photos of large groups of people. Tunick will hold his shoot on a Swiss glacier the weekend of August 18 and is seeking volunteers for the Greenpeace shoot. The Reuters report says that volunteers can register at www.greenpeace.ch/tunickglacier, but when I checked it, that was a dead link. If you want to offer up … Read more

Time to re-write one little section in my Webster's Dictionary. That's an old-time thing, ink on paper, you remember? It gives the fifth definition of "glacial" as "as slow as the movement of a glacier." Need to change that to read "fast" in the future.

British researchers have found the movement of Antarctic's glaciers is speeding up. During the decade ending in 2003, these southern glaciers speed up by 12 percent. That means these huge rivers of ice are speeding toward the ocean. There three things can happen: the ice melts, … Read more