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 by Andrew Glikson Figure 1. “ The Nuclear Winter ” by Carl Sagan The Cretaceous-Paleocene boundary (~66 million years-ago) asteroid impact, described in 1980 by Alvarez et al. , caused enough dust and debris to cloud large parts of planet and result in the mass extinction of some 80% of all species of animals . When Turco et al . (1983) and Carl Sagan (1983) warned the world about the climatic effects of a nuclear war, they pointed out that the amount of carbon stored in a large city was sufficient to release enough aerosols (smoke, soot and dust) to block sunlight over large regions, leading to a widespread failure of crops and thereby extensive starvation. Current nuclear arsenals by the United States and Russia could inject 150 Teragram (Tg) (10⁹ kilogram) of soot from fires ignited by nuclear explosions into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere ( Coupe et al., 2019 ), lasting for a period of 10 years or longer, followed by a period of intense radioactive r...

by Andrew Glikson Satellite measurements indicate that 2021 was one of the warmest years on record, with the past seven years being the hottest period recorded globally ( Met Office , January 10, 2022). Attempts at global emission reductions, lowered in part due to COVID-19 economic slow-down, appear to have little effect on atmospheric CO₂ rise, as indicated by the current rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide to record high levels of 420 ppm despite reduced emissions in 2020 -2021 (Figures 1 and 2). Figure 1. A. Mean global CO₂ levels from 800,000 years to the present (NASA).         B. Mean global temperature rise from 1850 to 2021 (Berkeley Earth). As stated by CarbonBrief : “The year so far has been one of extremes, featuring record-shattering heatwaves, wildfires and flooding, as well as the warmest-ever northern-hemisphere summer – June, July and August – in the global land-surface record.” Whereas climate negotiations mostly focus on possible reductions i...

BBC Culture  publishes the list of the 20 Best Movies of 2021 , which includes Almodovar's first film in English, "The Human Voice".  In this dense article, which is full of simple and composed adjectives and adverbs you will find interesting words and expressions for C1 students like: "[a] suspenseful, action-filled [film], wiliness, the film's themes [...] resonate profoundly with social justice movements today,  to feature, damsels in distress, [a] dreamlike film, a callow knight, to behead, to stroll, to gasp, bewildering, a smart-mouthed comic sidekick, swirl, stunningly shot, to blur the boundaries between fact and fiction, to reel back, to capture [the novel's] nuance, an entrancing work of art, over-the-top entertainment, giddy,  to mess up, a spellbinding drama, endless grievances and yearnings, grief, barrage, bone-crunching violence, grip, to boast, strait-laced, brooding, creepy, sprightly, chilling, a grief-racked, a pared-down drama, a s...

Activities for reviewing and recycling the language  from News Quiz 2021 Image credits: NASA  [PD];  TapTheForwardAssist  [CC BY-SA 4.0]; Glenn Francis  [CC BY-SA 4.0] I hope you enjoyed the latest edition of the News Quiz and didn't find too difficult. Like last year, the follow-up activities come in different formats, most of which can be edited and adapted for your needs. These include drag'n'drop activities on LearningApps, one matching activity on WordWall (Intermediate level only) and 'traditional' worksheets in PDF/editable Google Docs. If you haven't seen News Quiz 2021 - click HERE Accompanying Quizlet sets :  https://quizlet.com/leosel/folders/news-quiz-2021/  (two for Advanced and one for Intermediate level) The activities are grouped by level according to the two versions of the News Quiz. Online activities Advanced (B2+/C1) Drag'n'drop 1a  https://learningapps.org/watch?v=pb8myy57522 (preview below) Drag'n'drop 1b  https://...

NOAA's September 2021  global mean methane reading is 1900.5 parts per billion (ppb), which is 15.8 ppb higher than the reading for September 2020. By comparison, NOAA's annual global mean methane increase for 2020 of 15.74 ppb was at the time the highest on record.  Keep in mind that this 1900.5 ppb reading is for September 2021; it now is January 2022. Furthermore, NOAA's data are for marine surface measurements; more methane tends to accumulate at higher altitudes, and especially at higher latitudes North, as also illustrated by the images further below.  Above, a combination image of methane averages between latitudes 60°S and 60°N (top) and annual growth rates for these data (bottom) through to 2021, from a  Copernicus news release . The image on the right shows the Copernicus data for methane growth with an added trend that ominously points at a growth rate for 2022 that could be more than 20%.  Keep in mind that these are data for the latitude range fro...

YouTube has recently hidden the number of dislikes for YouTube videos. In a blog post from November , YouTube announced that this was done to "help better protect our creators from harassment, and reduce dislike attacks". The dislike button hasn't disappeared, but the dislike counts were made private, so that only video creators could see them. If you install this Chrome extension , you can bring back the number of dislikes next to the "dislike" button. Unfortunately, YouTube removed the ability to obtain the number of dislikes from the API, so the extension uses archived data and the number of dislikes from the extension's users. The extension has "200+ million videos likes/dislikes data stored before December 13th, 2021". This means that the number of dislikes displayed by the extension may be inaccurate, but it's still better than no information.