Worse Than We Thought February 12, 2010 : 7:08 PMMore evidence of the climate crisis is unfolding before our eyes. The situation in the Arctic is worse than data from satellite pictures have told us:
"For scientists studying the health of Arctic sea ice, satellite observations are absolutely essential for providing the big picture. It was satellites that revealed in September 2007 a record minimum ice coverage in the region -- the result of a massive summer melt. And it was satellites that showed in 2008 and 2009 the modest recovery of late-summer Arctic ice that suggested to some that the specter of a totally ice-free polar ocean might be somewhat less imminent than feared."
"But those high-altitude observations need occasional reality checks from scientists down on the surface. It was during one such on-the-ground research expedition last fall that David Barber, an Arctic climatologist at the University of Manitoba, got an unwelcome surprise."
"Barber was aboard the Canadian research icebreaker Amundsen, checking on ice in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska and Western Canada. The ship was well inside a region the satellites said should be choked with thick, multiyear-old ice. "That's pretty much a no-go zone for an icebreaker of the Amundsen's size," says Barber. But the ship kept going, at a brisk 13 knots -- its top speed in open water is 13.7 knots -- and even when it finally reached thick ice, he says, "we could still penetrate it easily.""
"In short, as Barber and his colleagues explain in a recent paper in Geophysical Review Letters, the analysis of what the satellites were seeing was wrong. Some of what satellites identified as thick, melt-resistant multiyear ice turned out to be, in Barber's words, "full of holes, like Swiss cheese. We haven't seen this sort of thing before.""
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
More on the line: Not a good sight
Friday, January 1, 2010
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Transit Advertising, “An analysis of its perception among customers and its efficiency among advertisers”
Varun B. Kumar
One of the old forms of advertising, evolution started as early as in 1830s when salespersons used to paint advertisements on their sales wagons and since then it has evolved to huge banners being put up covering whole of bus exteriors. Though it used to prove effective earlier but now it is losing its sheen and here I give a primer WHY? Here I’ll be discussing a few questions.
To what can this lack of performance be attributed? Is the image of transit advertising tarnished? Are the unique benefits of transit advertising unclear? Is the product offering not compelling? Are sales efforts falling short?
The purpose of my study was to 1) Understand advertising decision makers’ perceptions of transit advertising 2) Understand the direct impact of the concerned form on consumers 3) Come up with suggestions to improve the image. To achieve this, a quantitative study of common man (the consumer), was conducted as well as interviews with marketing representatives of transit agencies and sales contractors was conducted. What follows is a summary of findings, conclusions and recommendations.
Where do you advertise when you want to reach everybody? Transit advertising - placement of print ads on buses and other vehicles and in bus shelters and train stations--is an important medium for reaching an audience of all ages, backgrounds and incomes. You are not just addressing riders with these "moving billboards." You are reaching families and professionals in their vehicles, students shopping or right on campus, and tourists finding their way around town.
Why use transit advertising?
· You can't zap it.
· You can't ignore it.
· It can't be turned off like television.
· It reaches drivers and passengers no matter what radio stations they're listening to.
· The large, colorful, innovative designs demand attention.
· You have exclusivity in your space.
· It delivers a varied audience.
· It offers flexibility of ad size and location.
Transit is all set to grow, but still it lacks credibility and distinctiveness in today’s advertising market place
Market conditions and the marketers suggest that transit is all set to grow. The organizations outlook is shifting from spending millions of dollars on traditional advertising methods to using more customer sensitive and non-traditional advertising methods. In one of the interviews it came out that out-of-home media advertising is set to grow the most. And the reason for the form to grow is that the benefits offered by transit totally align with the needs of advertisers, at top being “up close and personal” with the consumer.
However to be fully competitive with the already existing billboards, newspapers, the Internet and other being developed forms transit has a long way to go. The quantitative study of 200 randomly picked consumers and 23 personally conducted interviews indicated to the following obstacles to transit advertising:
1) Transit agencies find it hard to grow and sometimes even sustain in the hard competition
2) It does not generate enough interest and enthusiasm either among advertisers or consumers
3) The overall level of satisfaction with transit media is low
4) The benefits its target audience perceives is neither highly motivating nor distinct from billboards
Key Finding: Transit advertising’s greatest strength is reaching captive audiences; however, it is perceived weaker in most objectives when compared to billboards
Key Finding: Attitude and habits concerning transit media are very indifferent among the media representatives
Next I give the most important aspect of the survey, “The image perceptions of transit advertising.” (Among consumers and representatives both combined)
Another reason for loss of shine is that a majority believed that transit does not deliver reliably, target well or even offer a good value. A misconception as far as I believe but I’m not the market and what they say has to be believed and taken as right. Only half of the ones surveyed believed that transit can be used to target specific areas or demographic groups. Even though a majority believed that it can’t be avoided, but then only 1/5th of the total respondents believed that transit delivered ROI. Another interesting thing that came to my notice was that although the advertisers were very comfortable in referring or recommending transit to their customers but the perceptions that they had about transit media were not positive.
Now when it comes to the consumers the story was almost similar here as well. Again the same trend followed:
· Though the consumers noticed such ads, majority in trains and buses, but they said that it does not have any major impact on their decisions of whether to or not to buy.
· Only 64 of 200 believed that transit has an impact.
· The fact stated by the representatives about sales rep and ROI was proved right when a mind boggling 72% of the respondents said that they never purchased anything and don’t even plan to buy as an impact of these adverts.
· The ROI which was generated somehow ended up low because the worth of purchases made due to transit were majorly below a thousand rupees, not keeping up to the investment made by the company.
· According to consumers as well the effectiveness of these adverts lagged in various areas
Developing new forms and working on innovative ideas for advertising is one thing but seeing an age old form of advertising losing its sheen and shine for just a misconception is different, practically speaking “unfair.” So following are a list of suggestions I feel can help in reviving the image of transit advertising
Recommendation #1: Reposition transit advertising to differentiate it from billboards, elevate its importance, and update its image.
Now perception plays an important role in transforming the image. If the transit positioned among its audience as something that surrounds consumers and not the product it will become a critical part of daily exposure experience. Such a positioning will differentiate, elevate and update transit on the whole.
Recommendation #2: Promote transit media both among the advertisers and the consumers
The need to do this on both ends arises because:
· Advertisers don’t see transit as a beneficial option,
And,
· Customers don’t believe in what the advertisers show through transit
Recommendation #3: Develop a credible measurement system for the transit in particular
Now, this one was suggested to me by a journalism student. What he told was, that the advertisers don’t believe in using transit as a media for advertising their product because they have no idea about its effectiveness, its reliability, its efficiency, and its value for money. So all these concerns will be addressed if and only once when transit becomes measurable.
Recommendation #4: Address image and product deficiencies of transit media
Now this has to be seen from two perspectives
1. Advertisers’ perception
a. Transit media are not clean
b. Have high production cost
2. Customers’ perception
a. Don’t grab attention like billboards and are not attractive
b. Don’t really portray the reality about the product
Now, these might not be able to provide transit media advertising a whole new outlook for both advertisers and customer but it’ll surely help to provide a much needed revamp.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
international day for climate action
Monday, October 19, 2009
Dinosaurs illfated
India Asteroid Killed Dinosaurs, Made Largest Crater?
The dinosaurs' demise may have been due to an asteroid double-whammy—two giant space rocks that struck near Mexico and India a few hundred thousand years apart, scientists say.
For decades one of the more popular theories for what killed the dinosaurs has focused on a single asteroid impact 65 million years ago.
A six-mile-wide (ten-kilometer-wide) asteroid is thought to have carved out the Chicxulub crater off Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, triggering worldwide climate changes that led to the mass extinction.
But the controversial new theory says the dinosaurs were actually finished off by another 25-mile-wide (40-kilometer-wide) asteroid. That space rock slammed into the planet off the western coast of India about 300,000 years after Chicxulub, experts say.
"The dinosaurs were really unlucky," said study co-author Sankar Chatterjee, a paleontologist at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.
Chatterjee thinks this second asteroid impact created a 300-mile-wide (500-kilometer-wide) depression on the Indian Ocean seafloor, which his team began exploring in 1996.
His team has dubbed this depression the Shiva crater, after the Hindu god of destruction and renewal.
"If we are correct," Chatterjee said, "this is the largest crater known on Earth."
Dinosaur-Killer Asteroid Boosted Volcanoes?
The Shiva asteroid impact was powerful enough to vaporize Earth's crust where it struck, allowing the much hotter mantle to well up and create the crater's tall, jagged rim, Chatterjee estimates.
What's more, his team thinks the impact caused a piece of the Indian subcontinent to break off and drift toward Africa, creating what are now the Seychelles islands (see map).
The Shiva impact may also have enhanced volcanic eruptions that were already occurring in what is now western India, Chatterjee added.
Some scientists have speculated that the noxious gases released by the Indian volcanoes, called the Deccan Traps, were crucial factors in the dinosaurs' extinction.
(Related: "'Dinosaur Killer' Asteroid Only One Part of New Quadruple-Whammy Theory.")
"It's very tempting to think that the impact actually triggered the volcanism," Chatterjee said.
"But that may not be true. It looks like the volcanism was already happening, and the [Shiva] impact just made it worse."
Arctic ice melt
This past spring scientists had taken measurements along a 280-mile (450-kilometer) route across the northern part of the Beaufort Sea (map). Most of the ice, they found, was young and thin.
"With a larger part of the region now first-year ice, it is clearly more vulnerable," expedition leader and sea-ice expert Peter Wadhams, og the University of Cambridge in England, said in a statement.
(Also see "Stormier Arctic Predicted as Ice Melts.")
Young Arctic Ice Vulnerable
The Arctic Ocean ice cover last spring was 6 feet (1.8 meters) thick, on average, indicating that it was only about a year old, the explorers said. More durable, multi-year ice, by contrast, is about nine feet (three meters) thick, according to NASA.
This relative thinness is an indication of the Arctic sea ice's poor health, said Mark Serreze, an Arctic-ice expert at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, in an interview with National Geographic News.
"Simply viewed, if we start out the melt season in spring with ice that is thin, it simply doesn't take as much solar energy to melt it out than if it was thicker," he said.
(See "Shrinking Arctic Sea Ice Thinner, More Vulnerable.")
Also, wind and ocean currents can more easily break up thinner ice, which exposes even more ice to warmer water. And once ice is free floating, winds and currents can push the ice south into warmer waters outside the Arctic Circle, Serreze added.
Dueling Dates for Arctic Ice Melt
The new data, presented by the Catlin Arctic Survey and the international conservation group WWF, support the view that the Arctic will be ice free in the summer within about 20 years.
Most of the ice melt is expected to happen within the next ten years, Wadhams said in his statement.
Serreze's group in Boulder, though, is on record saying the Arctic's summer sea ice will fully melt around 2030. Other groups have put the ice-free date as late as 2100.
(Related: "Arctic Ice to Last Decades Longer Than Thought?")
Why such seemingly wild guesses?
"When we lose the ice really depends on the natural variability in the system," Serreze said.
A good example of this is the record low year of 2007. That summer saw a perfect storm of climatic conditions: warm temperatures plus wind patterns that broke apart and pushed large chunks of ice out of the Arctic. (See "Warming Oceans Contributed to Record Arctic Melt" [2007].)
The summers of 2008 and 2009 have seen some recovery of Arctic ice, though the long-term trend is still for shrinking ice, Serreze said.
Will the slow, steady trend be the norm? Or will another year like 2007 come along and wipe out the Arctic ice?
"These are the unknowns," Serreze said. "We simply don't know."
Sunday, October 18, 2009
The climate Project
The Climate Project is making a difference September 23, 2009 : 11:02 AM
So far The Climate Project has trained more than 3,000 people to deliver my slide show. A study conducted by Milepost consulting found that the presentations these dedicated volunteers are giving have made a huge impact.
For example, the report found “that those who previously did not identify as ‘environmentalists’ underwent the greatest mental shift, becoming more likely to support emissions reduction and to reduce their carbon footprint.”
I want to congratulate all of The Climate Project’s presenters. You are really making a difference.
If you want to see these incredible volunteers in action, schedule a TCP presentation in your community by clicking here. [Link]
