Not a Pretty Picture

"Sure, it's pretty", you argue. "It's a spectacular image!" Well, yes. This is a photograph made by NASA in 2001, titled "Flat Earth at Night". It's an intriguing time-lapse (or other special satellite-based technique). We pulled it right off NASA's website. But we saw it first as part of the coverpages of a book called The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery, an Australian scientist and conservationist.

The object here is to see how much energy is being used up on Earth on any given night. This is not good, we're learning, and the stakes are higher than we had understood. The easiest way to "get the picture" is to read the subtitle of this book: "How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth."

We'll be talking about this situation in more detail over the next several weeks. In a few days, we'll start with energy consumption. We've already mentioned the title of a book about that: A Thousand Barrels a Second. Importantly, we're optimistic, and besides laying out the problems, we'll spend considerable space here on solutions. Do stay tuned.