Jun 16 2011

Short Term Air Emissions and Their Effect on Global Warming

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Fast action on certain pollutants such as black carbon, ground-level ozone and methane may help limit near term global temperature rise and significantly increase the chances of keeping temperature rise below 3.6 degrees F. Protecting the near-term climate is central to significantly cutting the risk of amplified global climate change linked with rapid and extensive loss of Arctic ice on both the land and at sea, said assessment authors including Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a climate and atmospheric scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.
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Jun 16 2011

Returning to the Caveman Diet

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In today's age of highly processed food, packaged and shaped to look like animals, filled with ingredients we have never heard of, it is tempting to return to a diet from a much simpler time. A new fad that is catching on, known as the Paleolithic or "paleo" diet, aims to return people to a more "natural" way of eating. Before agriculture, people would eat lean meats, fruits, and vegetables, and they would avoid grains and processed foods. Is this what is really best for human consumption? According to a new book, the so-called caveman diet was abandoned for a reason, and the belief that it is superior is pure hokum.
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Jun 16 2011

What Will Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Mean for Barrier Islands?

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ScienceDaily (June 15, 2011) — A new survey of barrier islands published earlier this spring offers the most thorough assessment to date of the thousands of small islands that hug the coasts of the world's landmasses. The study, led by Matthew Stutz of Meredith College, Raleigh, N.C., and Orrin Pilkey of Duke University, Durham, N.C., offers new insight into how the islands form and evolve over time -- and how they may fare as the climate changes and sea level rises.
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Jun 16 2011

Nearly Two Billion People Worldwide Now Overweight

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Washington, D.C.—More than 1.9 billion people worldwide were overweight in 2010, a 25 percent increase since 2002, a new Worldwatch analysis shows. A survey of statistics in 177 countries shows 38 percent of adults – those 15 years or older – are now overweight. The trend is strongly correlated to rising income and to an increase in preventable health problems, writes Richard H. Weil in the latest Vital Signs Online release from the Worldwatch Institute.
Categories: News
Jun 10 2011

Calculating Water Footprints: How Much Water in Your Food?

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Often, when you think about food production, it is only the carbon emissions in terms of fertilizer use, transportation etc that is accounted for. However, food production also has a steep water footprint. The water footprint is yet another environmental yardstick that measures how much water goes into the making of something.
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Jun 10 2011

Proposed new environmental regulations will cause AEP to retire 6,000 MW of U.S. coal generation

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American Electric Power, one of the country's largest coal-burning utilities, said on Thursday it plans to retire nearly one-quarter of its coal fleet and retrofit other units at a cost of as much as $8 billion to comply with proposed environmental regulations. To meet stricter pollution limits for air, water and coal waste, AEP said it will retire 6,000 megawatts of coal-fired generation in Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio in 2014. It also plans to upgrade or install new advanced emissions reduction equipment on another 10,100 MW, convert 1,070 MW of coal generation to 932 MW of natural gas capacity and build 1,220 MW of natural gas-fueled generation. The Columbus, Ohio-based company, which operates utilities in 11 states serving 5 million customers, warned that costs of the proposed regulations to customers and local economies have "been vastly underestimated," especially in Midwestern states that rely heavily on coal to produce electricity.
Categories: News
Jun 09 2011

The Fight Against Mosquitoes

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Mosquitoes are not very popular with human beings. They suck your blood and can cause infections. Many ways have been devised to limit their attacks. Female mosquitoes are efficient carriers of deadly diseases such as malaria, dengue and yellow fever, resulting each year in several million deaths and hundreds of millions of cases. To find human hosts to bite and spread disease, these mosquitoes use exhaled carbon dioxide as a vital cue. A disruption of the carbon dioxide detection machinery of mosquitoes, which would help control the spread of diseases they transmit, has therefore been a long sought-after goal. Anandasankar Ray, an assistant professor of entomology at the University of California, Riverside, and colleagues report that they have identified in the lab and in semi-field trials in Africa three classes of volatile odor molecules that can severely impair, if not completely disrupt, the mosquitoes' carbon dioxide detection machinery.
Categories: News
Jun 09 2011

Extreme Heat the New Norm

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The hottest summer day you remember from childhood could be the norm in a few decades; in fact it looks like the heat has already been cranked up. "When scientists talk about global warming causing more heat waves, people often ask if that means that the hottest temperatures will become 'the new normal,'" said Noah Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford, in a press release. "That got us thinking –- at what point can we expect the coolest seasonal temperatures to always be hotter than the historically highest temperatures for that season?"
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Jun 09 2011

Tidal Power Plant in East River Nears Federal Approval

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The nation's first tidal energy power plant may take shape in New York’s East River, under a pilot project recommended for approval last month by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ("FERC"). In December 2010, Verdant Power applied for a license to install 30 underwater turbines between Roosevelt Island and Queens, which would enable tidal power to be sold over the national electric grid for the first time ever.
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Jun 09 2011

China’s CO2 emissions rise sharply

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China's carbon dioxide emissions rose 10.4 percent in 2010 compared with the previous year, as global emissions rose at their fastest rate for more than four decades, data released by BP on Wednesday showed. "All forms of energy grew strongly (last year), with growth in fossil fuels suggesting that global CO2 emissions from energy use grew at the fastest rate since 1969," energy major BP's annual Statistical Review of World Energy said. The rapid growth is happening as U.N. talks look unlikely to agree on a legally binding deal to curb emissions and fight climate change before the existing Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. Global carbon dioxide emissions are widely seen as a major factor responsible for an increase in world temperatures. They grew 5.8 percent last year to 33.16 billion tonnes, as countries rebounded from economic recession, BP said. China's emissions accounted for 8.33 billion tonnes.
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