Showing results by author "Dan Grossman" in All Categories

In August 2003, Europe suffered the worst heat wave in at least 500 years. Forest fires raged in much of southern Europe, themselves causing deaths. Crops withered and trees died. One of the cities hit hardest was Paris. Although the high heat started in early August, it was nearly mid-month, after hundreds of people had been killed, before the French government recognized that the heat wave had turned deadly in Paris.

Important clues to the origins of the solar system come from asteroids, comets and meteors, believed to be remnants from the early solar system. Until the early 1990s, the only information obtained on these bodies was through Earth-based observations, either by observing them in orbit or by examining the remnants that reach us here on Earth. Producer Dan Grossman investigates the history of our understanding of comets.

For years experts have been warning that discontents of all stripes might make disease part of the arsenal of terror. Of all the deadly microbes that might be used by terrorists there is one that is especially formidable: smallpox. Once a major scourge of humanity, deadly smallpox was vanquished in 1977. But some experts worry that smallpox cultures could have fallen, or have the potential to fall, into the hands of terrorists.

The Eskimos in Alaska have a legend that they call "The year of no summer." One year, summer never came, winter just continued. No one could fish or hunt. And nothing could grow. The story is a creation myth. A few survivors were left to form what is now the Kauwerak tribe. Scientists are now looking at the legend as another piece of evidence for what they believe was a major climate shift in the Northern Hemisphere. Producer Dan Grossman takes on a journey to discover the truth behind the legend.

Moving at glacier pace once meant to move hardly at all. No longer. Scientists in Greenland and in Peru are watching glaciers rapidly move forward or retreat, and even disappear at historic rates. Producer Dan Grossman follows several teams as they record the meltdown of some of the world's largest glaciers. He goes to Swiss Camp, in Greenland, run by researchers at the University of Colorado, where they measure the rumbles of glaciers as they move across bedrock.