Global Warming Issues

Chef de mission Simon Clegg spoke at the flag-raising ceremony to welcome Team GB into the Olympic village.

Athletes woke this morning to a thick smog, temperatures of 37C and visibility down to a few hundred metres. The suffocating gloom descended on the Chinese capital after four days of clear skies.

City officials admitted pollution had worsened but said it posed no danger to competitors and emergency rescheduling of events would be unnecessary.

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International Olympic Committee officials are monitoring the heat, humidity and air pollution levels to determine whether contingency plans need to be put into action during the Beijing Games.

After a weekend of blue skies, a haze returned over the city today, four days before the opening ceremony. Together with the sweltering temperatures and draining humidity, midday conditions for any physical activity were brutal.

IOC president Jacques Rogge, his face a blotchy red after attending an outdoor sponsor ceremony, said he was waiting for the latest weather and air quality data.

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The project represents another first for the CSIRO PCC program - the first capture of carbon dioxide in China using a PCC pilot plant. It begins the process of applying the technology to Chinese conditions and evaluating its effectiveness.

PCC is a process that uses a liquid to capture carbon dioxide from power station flue gases and is a technology that can potentially reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing and future coal-fired power stations by more than 85 per cent.

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Inspired by music videos, the objective of Code_swarm is to create an engaging visual representation of computer software accessible to anyone, said Michael Ogawa, who created the movies in the laboratory of Professor Kwan-Liu Ma at the UC Davis Department of Computer Science.

Computer software projects are among the most complex artifacts ever created by humans. Some of the most complex are “open source” programs that are created by a floating group of volunteers developing and making changes to different parts of the code.

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A forest fire remote monitoring system has been successfully tested in Portugal that could prevent the destruction of millions of hectares, as well as save lives.

Vigilant monitoring of mountainous forest is very difficult and expensive – but a fire that takes hold can be even more expensive. The fires in Greece in summer 2007 destroyed more than 2700 kilometres of forest and farmland, as well as more than 1000 homes, and they caused the deaths of over 80 people.

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Driving south out of the agricultural town of Ainsworth, you can’t miss its newest crop: wind turbines, three dozen of them, with steel stalks 230 feet high and petal-like blades 131 feet long, sprouting improbably from the sand hills of north-central Nebraska, beside ruminating cattle.

Though painted gray, the turbines stand out against the evening backdrop of battleship-colored thunderclouds and bear an almost celestial whiteness when day’s light is right. Airplane pilots can spot them from far away, and rarely does a bird make their unfortunate acquaintance.

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Each week, some consumers must choose between buying food or fuel. The truth is, the high cost of food and fuel are directly related. We are diverting more and more of our nation’s farm fields to grow corn and soy beans for fuel for our automobiles instead of food for our tables.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 25 percent of America’s corn crop was diverted to produce ethanol in 2007, and 30 percent to 35 percent of our corn will be diverted in 2008.

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New Mexico officials said Thursday they will appeal an air-quality permit the U.S. federal government granted…The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a permit Thursday for a 1,500-megawatt coal-fired power plant called Desert Rock being developed on Navajo Nation land by the nation’s Dine Power Authority and by energy company Sithe Global Power LLC. The developers estimate the plant will cost $3 billion.

Love pizza, but don’t think it’s good for you? Pizza Hut is now trying to appeal to the health conscious. The Dallas-based company plans to launch a new “all-natural” pie made with organic tomatoes, toppings made without artificial preservatives and a multigrain crust.

“While customers are increasingly seeking options for more natural foods, they still love pizza,” said Brian Niccol, Pizza Hut’s chief marketing officer. “That’s why we’re offering the natural. It allows us to stay on the cutting edge of food trends while delivering on the amazing Pizza Hut taste our customers expect and demand.”

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The per capita rate of carbon dioxide emission (CO2) is high in the GCC nations. The good news is that total emission of the toxic green house gas is low in the region, except for Saudi Arabia and relatively UAE, a Qatari expert said.

Dr Hasan Al Mohndi, Assistant Professor Water Resources, Qatar University, said in his document published by the UAE-based Gulf Research Centre (GRC) that Qatar has the highest per capita CO2 emissions in the world.

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