Giant Iceberg

Sydney (dpa) - Eine Jahrhundert-Kollision hat in der Antarktis einen gigantischen neuen Eisberg geschaffen. Der 78 Kilometer lange und bis zu 39 Kilometer breite Koloss brach von einer schwimmenden Gletscherzunge ab, nachdem ein anderer Rieseneisberg dagegen gekracht war.

Nothing to do with global warming this time. What influence is this likely to have on the ecosystem? Some seem to think it might influence the weather thousands of kilometers away but others suggest that's unlikely. To see the full report, from which the quote above is taken, go to Neuer Eisberg nach Jahrhundert-Kollision

VLC Media Player and 3Sat Mediathek

I use VLC Media Player to watch videos and listen to audio podcasts. It will play just about anything you throw at it, including HD, and the great thing is it is a free download.
A neat trick I recently discovered is that if you have a link to a video stream on your clipboard you can get VLC to play it either from the Media menu >Open location from clipboard or by using the Ctrl-V combination when VLC has the focus. I find this particularly useful when looking at the 3Sat media offerings.

I take an RSS feed from 3Sat http://www.3sat.de/mediathek/rss/mediathek.xml which offers more than I can possibly view. Some of the videos are very short trailers, less than a minute, so they offer a brief taster of German language without you needing to get too serious. Then there are full programmes.

My favourite is nano and I've just watched yesterday's broadcast. The link to put on your clip board is http://hstreaming.zdf.de/3sat/veryhigh/100217_sendung_nano.mov If your internet connection cannot handle this stream go http://www.3sat.de/mediathek/?obj=16974 and you can then choose a lower connection speed - sellect Einstellungen towards the bottom right of the window and change the settings.

Another programme I watched recently was  hitec: Die Wettermacher - Lässt sich unser Klima kontrollieren? with spectacular images like the picture above. Highly recommended. The link for your clipboard is http://hstreaming.zdf.de/3sat/veryhigh/090713_wettermacher_hitec.mov Strangely this is billed as the complete programme from 21.02.2010 - We do time travel on this blog.

Wine and time - more sayings

I promised more sayings about wine and here they are:

Was die Hundestage gießen, müssen die Trauben büßen. The Hundestage are when the sun is found in the same part of the sky as Sirius (the dog star) i.e. the end of July through to the end of August. If you get to much rain at that time then the quality of the wine will be poor. The same idea is expressed through Wenn gedeihen soll der Wein, muss der Juli trocken sein. But a mild winter that brings little rain or snow is good. Sind im Jänner die Bäche klein, dann gibt im Herbst es guten Wein. Notice the strange placing of es and the typically Austrian use of Jänner for January.

Some sayings relate to the Church calendar. Wenn es Jakobi regnet, ist der Wein nicht sehr gesegnet. Jakobi - St James - is 15 July. Wenn Matthäus weint statt lacht, aus Wein er doch noch essig macht. St Matthew is 21 September and at this time the grapes will have reached a stage of ripening in which heavy rain will disturb the production of sugar (fructose) in the grapes. Soll der Winzer fröhlich sein, tritt Allerheiligen Sommer ein. Sunshine at this time - 1 November - gives extra sweetness to the Spätlese-Trauben.  The grapes harvested very late on when the main season is over give a particularly sweet and high quality wine - not my taste, I'm afraid.

Climate Change Challenged

There seems to be a growing trend of scepticism. The IPCC (International Panel for Climate Change - der Weltklimarat auf Deutsch) has acknowledged that their own warnings about the rate of glacial melt in the Himalayas has insufficient scientific basis. Weltklimarat muss umstrittene Prognose zurückziehen is the headline in tagesshau.de
It's good that the IPCC are open to correction and acknowledge things that don't meet their own standards. What is more worrying is the way corrections are seized on as though they were absolute proof that climate change is nothing but hysteria. Yes we need corrections but we also need prompt action to try to reduce the human contribution to global warming. Even if the climate change models were much better developed the sceptics would still be in denial.
I was also interested to see that Michael Fish commented on Monday that long term forecasting is a science in its infancy - guardian.co.uk Comment is free Climate change sceptism
Wie denken Sie über die Sache?  Wie finden Sie die Umweltpolitik Ihres Landes?

Cold Weather

The snow is beginning to go and I took the car out for the first time in 10 days - started at a touch, much to my great relief.

Having published posts on weather and climate change, I noticed that WDR are showing Fit für die Kälte this week - Quarks & Co (Tuesday and Saturday). I've seen this one before and recommend you download it. You can also download an accompanying PDF file with text and pictures covering the same ground as the video - useful if you need to look up some of the vocabulary used. Look for the words PDF zur Sendung in the sidebar on the right. A little further down you'll also find a link to a related PDF file on Das Wetter.

Climate Change - Klimawandel

Can we forget climate change now?

I’m sure a lot of people are wondering whether we can still speak about global warming given the cold weather in Britain and Germany. We’ve been freezing but Winters are supposed to get milder. Perhaps I’m stating the obvious when I say climate is not the same as weather but some people just don’t get it. A few weeks when the weather is colder than average will not change the 30 year average much. Climate is about statistics and not about short-term weather events.

Here’s the start of an article by Dr. Tim Steiger which appears on the ARD website.

War‘s das jetzt mit dem Klimawandel?



Wie passt der bisher recht kalte Winter ins Bild einer globalen Erwärmung?
Deutschland friert und trotzdem sollen vor allem die Winter hierzulande immer milder werden? Ein scheinbarer Widerspruch, der dieser Tage wieder leise Zweifel an der globalen Erwärmung hochkommen lässt. Jedoch vollzieht sich der Klimawandel einerseits innerhalb von Jahrzehnten und andererseits nicht nur in Deutschland, sondern weltweit.
 
full article
glossary of weather terms
more environmental issues vocabulary and links to German Umwelt lexicons

What are your views on global warming? Perhaps you could add a comment and express your opinion in German.