Saturday Morning Cartoons: Birds, Dinos and Climate Change
Image Credit: By The Photographer (Own work) , via Wikimedia Commons
This week in Saturday Morning Cartoons, we've got traveling birds, roaring dinos and the perils of climate change.
While COP21 was happening in Paris, scientists kept churning out climate change research
The UN Conference on Climate Change ran from November 30th to December 11th, 2015.
With United Nations Conference on Climate Change drawing to a close, I wanted to compile a round-up of the climate change news released since the start of the conference.
Before I begin with the news, I found a few non-news related tidbits about the conference. I found this map of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). It provides insight into the various climate regimes within the convention. I also found this article about climate activism and what drives climate change efforts . And finally, this report came out of COP21, and it describes the benefits and trade-offs of low-carbon energy (for the full report, click here).
Dinosaurs at THEMUSEUM- Visit them before they're gone
Dinosaurs: The Edge of Extinction has been open at THEMUSEUM since I started working, but I only just got a chance go through the exhibition from top to bottom.
The exhibition opened this March and apparently did very well over the summer. Not surprising. Since I've been working the floors, it's always funny how ecstatic the children get when an adult in the group announces that they're all going to the third floor to the dinosaurs. Everyone loves dinosaurs, right?
The Messenger and the message
One of the beautiful things about summer is waking up to bird song; the trilling chorus outside my window as the rising sun paints everything rosy and gold. It's winter now. The mornings are pretty quiet. There's no choir of birdsong. But if you live where songbirds migrate, their disappearance and reappearance are just part of the natural cycles. We're always pleased when birds begin to arrive from their overwintering homes. I know I am. But what if the birds never came back? What if the birdsong stopped? Su Rynard's film The Messenger addresses these question. I had a chance to view the documentary at the Guelph Film Festival this past November.
The Making of 'Light Illuminated'
Radio. Photography. Microwaves. Television. The Internet. What do these things have in common? They're all forms of 'light-based' technology. Without light and its basic properties we wouldn't have these and many other modern tools. That said, without light and its basic properties we probably wouldn't exist either. Without the Sun, what would heat up our planet? What would provide light for the photosynthesizing organisms that form the base of most of our planet's food webs?
The word wall at the end of the exhibition highlights the important ways that light is used in our everyday lives. Photo credit: Brent Wettlaufer/THEMUSEUM
Light is necessary. To celebrate light and light-based technologies the UN has designated 2015 the International Year of Light. In honour of the occasion, THEMUSEUM, located in downtown Kitchener, is hosting an exhibition called Light Illuminated.