Global Warming Issues

Climate models predict a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean by 2050. That will restore conditions that last existed during the mid-Pliocene era around three to 3.5 million years ago. Several north Pacific species have relatives in the north Atlantic, and the fossil record shows a lot of invasion from the Pacific to the Atlantic at that time, Vermeij said.

When cold conditions returned, the Arctic route was cut off, mostly by a lack of food. As the ice melts, productivity in the Arctic will rise and the northward march of the mollusks will resume where it left off three million years ago.

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Another day of showers and thunderstorms is expected across the Northeast on Monday, as an area of low pressure continues to move slowly to the northeast. The focus of today’s showers and thunderstorms will be farther to the north and east, with New England expected to receive the heaviest rainfall. Flooding will also be a concern as much of New England has already received a surplus of rain this summer, and water levels remain high in many areas.

Farther south, parts of the Middle Atlantic will remain rain-free, as dry air moves in from the northwest.

A paper in the journal Conservation Letters says reducing cattle and sheep populations and increasing the kangaroo numbers to 175 million by 2020 would lower greenhouse gas emissions by 16 megatonnes, or 3 percent of Australia’s total emissions.

The paper’s lead author, George Wilson, says a proposal to reduce sheep and cattle numbers on the rangelands by 30 percent should be considered.

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Retailers are typically obsessed with what to put under their roofs, not on them. Yet the nation’s biggest store chains are coming to see their immense, flat roofs as an untapped resource.

In recent months, chains including Wal-Mart Stores, Kohl’s, Safeway and Whole Foods Market have installed solar panels on roofs of their stores to generate electricity on a large scale. One reason they are racing is to beat a Dec. 31 deadline to gain tax advantages for these projects.

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Scientists studying variations in tropical heat and rainfall since the mid-1980s have found a strong link between warm periods and a rise in the frequency of the most extreme downpours.

The observed rise in the heaviest tropical rains is about twice that produced by computer simulations used to assess how human-caused global warming could change rainfall, said the researchers.

Other studies have already measured a rise in recent decades in heavy rains in areas as varied as North America and India, and climatologists have long forecast more heavy rainstorms in a world warmed by accumulating greenhouse gases.

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Serious air pollution in Christchurch, mainly from wood smoke, does have an impact on the respiratory health of young people, but the immediate effect is not major according to new research by the University of Otago, Christchurch.

The study, which has recently been published in Environmental Health, examined the respiratory and physiological effects of particulate air pollution on the lung function of 93 male secondary students, 26 of whom had asthma, who were boarding at Christ’s College. Each boy measured their lung function morning and evening throughout the winter, and those with asthma noted the use of their reliever. Researchers also tested students in more detail on very high pollution days.

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Their experimentally verified “domino-cascade model” shows that local stresses within the material allow electrical and ionic conduction to spread from one area to the next, making the battery function. These results open new horizons in the search for improved battery electrode materials and help explain how tomorrow’s electric car batteries work.

Lithium-ion batteries, which store three to four times more energy per unit mass than traditional batteries, are now used extensively in portable electronic devices (computers, cell phones, MP3 players, etc.). The positive electrode materials in these batteries are highly effective but too expensive to be used in the large batteries needed for electric vehicles and second generation hybrid vehicles.

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