Global Warming Issues

Now, writing in the International Journal of Technology and Globalisation, researchers in The Netherlands point to possible causes for this disparity and offer hope of reversing the trend based on a technological approach.

Agricultural production expert Prem Bindraban, plant breeder Huub Loeffler, and ecologist Rudy Rabbinge of Wageningen University and Research Centre in The Netherlands, highlight the disparity between growing food availability across the globe compared with Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Food has increased by almost one third per person over the last forty years but has decreased by 12% in SSA.

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The annual summer retreat of the sea ice cloaking the Arctic Ocean appears to have ended with the ice not quite matching last year’s extraordinary recession, polar scientists said Tuesday.

Still, the scientists, at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., said that the ice in the Arctic this summer was 33 percent below the average extent tracked since satellites started monitoring the region in 1979 and that the trend continued toward an ice-free Arctic Ocean within a few decades.

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For decades, opposition to new offshore oil drilling has been a core principle of Congressional Democrats, ranking in the party pantheon somewhere just below protecting Social Security and increasing the minimum wage.
But a concerted Republican assault over domestic oil production and the threat of political backlash from financially pressed motorists have Democrats poised to embrace a fundamental shift in energy policy.

Even more surprising, the turnabout is led by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, who has a history of fighting oil drilling going back to the early days of her career in California.

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European legislators said Thursday that government goals for using biofuels should be pared back, prompting the fledgling industry to fire back with a campaign warning that alternatives may be no cleaner.

European governments pledged last year to increase the use of biofuels to 10 percent of all transport fuel by 2020, amid expectations that energy derived from crops would provide a low-carbon alternative.

On Thursday, the European Parliament’s influential Industry Committee endorsed the general 10 percent target — but added a number of modifications meant to move away from traditional biofuels made from grains or other crops toward other, renewable energy sources.

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In a recent study of 48 Boston-area patients, all of whom had coronary artery disease, 24-hour Holter monitors were used to examine electrocardiograms for the conductivity change called an ST-segment depression, which may indicate inadequate blood flow to the heart or inflamed heart muscle.

The average 24-hour levels for all pollutants included in the analysis were below accepted or proposed National Air Quality Standard thresholds, meaning patients were breathing air considered healthy.

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The following article by Linda Duncan, the federal New Democratic Party candidate in Edmonton Strathcona, is the third in an occasional series on environmental policy that will appear in these pages in coming weeks as the federal election campaign progresses.

The first, focusing on the Liberals’ “Green Shift” plan and written by Liberal Senator Grant Mitchell, appeared on Aug. 27 and the second, focusing on the Tories’ environmental policy and written by Edmonton-Leduc Conservative MP James Rajotte, appeared on Aug. 30. Both articles can be found under Online Extras at edmontonjournal.com.

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If an indoor smoking ban set to go into effect this Thursday is to clear the air, smokers and the establishments that welcome them should know about it.
Apparently, they don’t.

“The state is very, very poor — communication-wise,” said Mike McCloskey, who owns Railroad Street Bar & Grill in Linfield.

The statewide smoking ban has been touted as landmark legislation for Pennsylvania’s public health. The law would ban smoking in most public places, but among exceptions are bars and taverns that generate less than 20 percent of total sales from food.

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This is one of those storms not to be taken lightly. Ike is going to be a big, bad hurricane, quite capable of unleashing devastation where it hits.

The storm is going to feed from the heat energy stored in the Gulf of Mexico. The heat is transferred into the atmosphere through evaporation and then condensation. The release of this energy into the developing storm is what creates the large pressure gradient that in turn drives the powerful winds.

Another factor working in favor of intensification is the light wind field that surrounds the storm.

Taking everything into account, Ike is likely to become a major Category 3 hurricane within the next 36 hours, and it could climb to Category 4 before slamming into the mid-Texas coast early Saturday.

Lavish parties tend to leave a hangover as the problems of daily life, put aside for the celebrations, come crowding back. China’s Olympic party is not likely to prove an exception. The full legacy of the extraordinary events of 2008 in the People’s Republic of China will take many years to emerge, but in the short term, a number of pressing problems are clear.

The Olympics, with its political project of displaying China’s power as much to its own population as to the rest of the world, has been the prime focus of domestic propaganda for several years, rallying people behind the nationalist theme with the promise to situate China as a restored power. It worked: recent opinion polls have reported a strong feelgood effect, with high levels of satisfaction with the government and the direction of the country.

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After months of political assault from Republicans over high gasoline prices, House Democrats are preparing legislation that would relax a decades-old ban on oil drilling along much of the nation’s coastline.

The legislation, still being assembled Wednesday for a vote as early as Thursday, would also require utility companies to generate more power from renewable sources, provide tax incentives for alternative energy like wind power and institute new conservation programs.

The measure, which would retain current restrictions on drilling off the Gulf Coast of Florida, would repeal some federal subsidies for oil companies and seek to improve the collection of royalty payments.

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