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Thread: World Environment News , Ecology websites etc |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 369
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Gas could be the cavalry in global warming fight
An unlikely source of energy has emerged to meet international demands that the United States do more to fight global warming: It's cleaner than coal, cheaper than oil and a 90-year supply is under our feet. It's natural gas, the same fossil fuel that was in such short supply a decade ago that it was deemed unreliable. It's now being uncovered at such a rapid pace that its price is near a seven-year low. Long used to heat half the nation's homes, it's becoming the fuel of choice when building new power plants. Someday, it may win wider acceptance as a replacement for gasoline in our cars and trucks...... |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
IUCN, International Union for Conservation of Nature,
Turning the tide - Copenhagen and beyond IUCN sent a strong delegation to the United Nations climate change summit that took place 7-18 December. It was striving to ensure that nature's solutions are incorporated into a post-2012 agreement to mitigate climate change and adapt to the impacts we cannot now avoid Learn More IUCN Climate Change Film |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
The World's Smallest Snowman
The snowman is 10 µm across, 1/5th the width of a human hair. The snowman was made from two tin beads used to calibrate electron microscope astigmatism. The eyes and smile were milled using a focused ion beam, and the nose, which is under 1 µm wide (or 0.001 mm), is ion beam deposited platinum. A nanomanipulation system was used to assemble the parts 'by hand' and platinum deposition was used to weld all elements together. The snowman is mounted on a silicon cantilever from an atomic force microscope whose sharp tip 'feels' surfaces creating topographic surveys at almost atomic scales. What a waste of money by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) the UK's National Measurement Institute !! |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Unusually warm weather (ROUNDUP)
 26 December 2009 | 18:11 | FOCUS News Agency Weather in the country continues to be unusually warm. The high temperatures registered new records. Temperatures throughout the country are above the zero and at some places the thermometers hit 20°C. The untypically high temperatures made certain plants grow, like snowdrops, hyacinth and roses, which are already seen in the town of Blagoevgrad. Record-breaking temperature was registered at the Rozhen peak on Saturday, the meteorologist on duty, Petar Koychev, announced. The maximum temperature measured today was of 12°C. This is the latest temperature record, as the weather at Rozhen has never been so hot at Christmas in the last 10 years. The snow-cover at Rozhen peak is intensively melting. Highest temperature in Bulgaria on Saturday, December 26, was registered in the coastal town of Ahtopol, the National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology announced for Radio FOCUS - Varna. At around 2 p.m. the thermometer hit 20°C, which makes Ahtopol the hottest city in the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. We cannot say there is a record, as meteorologists do statistics only for the bigger cities. In coastal Burgas, the highest temperature of 16°C was registered at around 2 p.m. The temperatures are decreasing at the moment, meteorologists in Burgas say. Temperature in the town of Veliko Tarnovo was record-high too - 17°C. Citizens of the coastal town of Varna took advantage of the high temperatures to go for a walk on the beach. The untypically high temperatures made certain plants grow, like snowdrops, hyacinth and roses, which are already seen in the town of Blagoevgrad. Some fruit trees are also covered with blossoms – peaches and apricots. This sham spring may turn harmful for the plants if there is drastic drop in temperatures, farmers say. Thermometer hits 20°C in coastal Ahtopol 26 December 2009 | 17:08 | FOCUS News Agency Burgas. Highest temperature in Bulgaria on Saturday, December 26, was registered in the coastal town of Ahtopol, the National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology announced for Radio FOCUS - Varna. At around 2 p.m. the thermometer hit 20°C, which makes Ahtopol the hottest city in the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. We cannot say there is a record, as meteorologists do statistics only for the bigger cities. In coastal Burgas, the highest temperature of 16°C was registered at around 2 p.m. The temperatures are decreasing at the moment, meteorologists in Burgas say. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Climate and humans: the long view
We seem preoccupied today by looming predictions of imminent climate change. Outlooks have been shifting in response to a global phenomenon This is understandable as our lifestyles and lives appear to be coming under threat from this global phenomenon of unprecedented scale. But if we were to use the deep history of this planet as our yardstick, the unusual thing would be for our climate to remain immutable. Earth's climate has always been in flux and the last 10,000 years, which in relative terms have been fairly stable, are not the rule. In those 10,000 years we have gone from hunter-gatherers to farmers, industrialists and travellers in cyberspace, seemingly safe within the cocooned illusion that climatic stability was the way of the world. Human imprint And all the time, the deadline for the next climatic downturn, leading to the next Ice Age, was getting closer. It gets closer every day that goes by and our science cannot predict when this will happen. But happen it will. More .... Clive Finlayson is director of the Gibraltar Museum and author of the book "The Humans Who Went Extinct. Why Neanderthals died out and we survived", in which the theme of this article is expanded. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Climate change puts ecosystems on the run From Stanford University
As global warming heats up the surface of the Earth, ecosystems will physically shift. The question is, will the plants and animals inhabiting those ecosystems be able to keep up or will they be left behind? If they can't keep up, some species may die out. To keep up with global warming, the average ecosystem will need to shift its physical boundaries about a quarter mile each year, says a new study led by scientists at Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution. For some habitats, especially in low-lying areas, climate belts are moving even faster, putting many species at risk of being left behind, especially where human development has blocked migration paths. "Expressed as velocities, climate-change projections connect directly to survival prospects for plants and animals. These are the conditions that will set the stage, whether species move or cope in place," says study co-author Chris Field, professor of biology and of environmental Earth system science. The research team, which included researchers from Stanford, the Carnegie Institution, the California Academy of Sciences, and the University of California, Berkeley, combined data on current climate and temperature gradients worldwide with climate model projections for the next century to calculate the "temperature velocity" for different regions of the world. This velocity is a measure of how fast temperature zones are moving across the landscape, either to higher elevations or higher latitudes, as the planet warms – and how fast plants and animals will need to migrate to keep up. The researchers found that as a global average, the expected temperature velocity for the 21st century is 0.42 kilometers (0.26 miles) per year. But this figure varies widely according to topography and habitat....... |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hundreds of whales die in New Zealand
Conservation workers in New Zealand have attempted to coax pilot whales back into the sea, after they got stranded on a beach. Hundreds of volunteers tried to keep the mammals wet throughout the day. Around 125 whales died, whilst 43 others managed to swim free from Colville Beach on North Island's Coromandel peninsula.- |
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brown chris
Master Cruncher California - USA Joined: Nov 18, 2004 Post Count: 2395 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Climate change puts ecosystems on the run From Stanford University As global warming heats up the surface of the Earth, ecosystems will physically shift. The question is, will the plants and animals inhabiting those ecosystems be able to keep up or will they be left behind? If they can't keep up, some species may die out. To keep up with global warming, the average ecosystem will need to shift its physical boundaries about a quarter mile each year, says a new study led by scientists at Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution. For some habitats, especially in low-lying areas, climate belts are moving even faster, putting many species at risk of being left behind, especially where human development has blocked migration paths. "Expressed as velocities, climate-change projections connect directly to survival prospects for plants and animals. These are the conditions that will set the stage, whether species move or cope in place," says study co-author Chris Field, professor of biology and of environmental Earth system science. The research team, which included researchers from Stanford, the Carnegie Institution, the California Academy of Sciences, and the University of California, Berkeley, combined data on current climate and temperature gradients worldwide with climate model projections for the next century to calculate the "temperature velocity" for different regions of the world. This velocity is a measure of how fast temperature zones are moving across the landscape, either to higher elevations or higher latitudes, as the planet warms – and how fast plants and animals will need to migrate to keep up. The researchers found that as a global average, the expected temperature velocity for the 21st century is 0.42 kilometers (0.26 miles) per year. But this figure varies widely according to topography and habitat....... The globe has been cooling down for the past 11 years. What is the point of this?
BIG BANG THEORY: In the beginning there was nothing... which exploded
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