Image via WikipediaBreathing in air pollution from traffic fumes can raise the risk of potentially deadly blood clots, a US study says.
Exhaust fumes contain small particulates
Exposure to small particulates - tiny chemicals caused by burning fossil fuels - is known to increase the chances of heart disease and stroke.
But the Harvard School of Public [...]
The disastrous hurricanes of recent years have become the poster children of global warming.
But Roger A. Pielke Jr., an environmental policy expert at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wondered whether the billions of dollars of damage was caused by more intense storms or more coastal development.
Is warming a clear danger for Tahoe?
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Reducing hurricane damage
After [...]
A US scientist has devised a carbon filter to clear the atmosphere of carbon emissions, albeit at a fabulous cost.
Here’s a simple solution to global warming: vacuum carbon dioxide out of the air.
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Klaus Lackner, a physicist at Columbia University, said placing enough carbon filters around the planet could reel the world’s atmosphere back toward the [...]
About 500 US colleges have pledged to achieve zero carbon emissions, reports Jeffrey Thomas
A class apart: Dartmouth College in New Hampshire won an A for being sustainable
The “greening†of US campuses is gaining momentum. Many college and university presidents are committing their institutions to a reduction in their carbon footprint — the amount of carbon [...]
Inhaled diesel exhaust triggers a stress response in the brain. This could have damaging long-term effects on brain function in people living in areas with high traffic pollution.
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Small particles of soot, or nanoparticles, can travel up the nose and lodge in the brain. It is conceivable that this could interfere with normal brain function and [...]
Think Globally, Eat Locally
We all know that our planet needs our help right now, but we often feel unsure about what to do, where to make an effort, and what will really help. The good news is that we can heal the planet on a daily basis simply by buying and eating food that [...]
Solar energy has long been touted as better for the environment than fossil fuels.
Increasingly, however, there are fears that making solar cells might release more hazardous pollution than fossil fuels would.
To ease those concerns, scientists studied the matter closely and now conclude that manufacturing solar cells produces far fewer air pollutants than conventional fossil-fuel-burning power [...]
Greenhouse gases are components of the atmosphere that contribute to the greenhouse effect. Without the greenhouse effect the Earth would be uninhabitable; in its absence, the mean temperature of the earth would be about −19 °C (−2 °F, 254 K) rather than the present mean temperature of about 15 °C (59 °F, 288 K). Greenhouse [...]
Ozone has been cast in the roles of both villain and victim in the media of the past decade. Ozone is an everyday part of the atmosphere playing a number of complex roles and is constantly being created and destroyed.
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We should have ozone around as long as we have an atmosphere with abundant oxygen. In [...]
Growing consumer demand for environmentally-friendly cleaning products has moved “green” cleaning supplies from a fringe industry to an economic powerhouse that has attracted the attention of big corporations.
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Suppliers are increasingly providing cleaning products that contain natural or naturally-derived ingredients, while avoiding the use of environmentally-harmful chemicals. Clorox is the latest to offer a line of [...]
Ecological sanitation, also known as ecosan, is a modern alternative to conventional sanitation techniques. The objectives are to offer economically and ecologically sustainable and culturally acceptable systems that aim to close the natural nutrient and water cycle. Unlike most traditional sanitation methods, ecological sanitation processes human waste to recover nutrients that would otherwise be discarded.
Introduction [...]
WASHINGTON: Want to live a more environmental friendly life but don’t know how? Well, all you need to do is follow eight simple steps.
The steps have been detailed by the Environmental News Network, which states that following these really will let you do your bit for the environment.
Below are listed eight easy ways [...]
Americans produce more and more garbage every year. And even careful recyclers can feel overwhelmed by the amount of household waste that goes beyond what municipal recyclers can handle.
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Co-op American has assembled a handy list of how to recycle items you might right now feel obliged to throw away. Click the link below for [...]
LONDON: World temperatures will cool slightly in 2008, but it will remain among the top 10 hottest years on record, British weather experts predicted on Thursday.
The impact of a strong La Nina climate pattern over the Pacific will help keep temperatures down, according to the annual forecast by the Met Office and the University [...]
Global climate change is “very likely” to have a human cause, an influential group of scientists has concluded.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said temperatures were probably going to increase by 1.8-4C (3.2-7.2F) by the end of the century.
It also projected that sea levels were most likely to rise by 28-43cm, and [...]
ROCHESTER: Catching his breath at a fitness club, Matt McHugh took a gulp of water from his trusty, hard-plastic Nalgene bottle and pondered the idea of switching to an alternative made of glass, stainless steel or another kind of plastic.
Worries about a hormone-mimicking chemical used in the trendy sports accessory led a major Canadian [...]
As the majority of the population is aware, there is no longer any reasonable doubt that the dramatic climate change the world is experiencing is down to carbon dioxide or CO2 emissions and its abundance within our environment. What you may not know however, is just how much the UK contributes to this world wide [...]
Agriculture can be spoiled by global warming. Crops die during droughts brought on by global warming. Storms intensified by global warming can damage agricultural buildings and injure animals. Floods resulting from these storms can drown out crops before they can be harvested.
Gasoline prices have an effect on the economics of communities. When gas prices are [...]
NEW DELHI: A group of European scientists are launching an Arctic probe to study the ice-cap melt and predict the date for a complete meltdown at the North Pole.
The survey comes in the backdrop of the melting of snow in the polar region that led to an ice-free north-west passage for the first time [...]
LONDON: It may be a threat to humans’ long-term future on the planet, but climate change has helped bring us into being in the first place.
International scientists have carried out a study and found that millions of years ago, the evolution of the earliest human ancestors was driven by wild swings in eastern Africa’s [...]
Many greenhouse gases occur naturally, such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. Others such as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) result exclusively from human industrial processes.
Human Activities and Greenhouse Gases
Human activities also add significantly to the level of naturally occurring greenhouse gases:
Carbon dioxide is released into the [...]
Scientists have determined that a number of human activities are contributing to global warming by adding excessive amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide accummulate in the atmosphere and trap heat that normally would exit into outer space.
Greenhouse Gases and Global Warming
While many greenhouse gases occur naturally and are [...]
In a path-breaking development, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and others, are soon going to be in a position where they play God with the weather.
So-called hurricane modifiers aim to steer dangerous weather patterns off course and to weaken hurricanes in the hope of preventing disasters like Hurricane Katrina. Scientists have [...]
A plastic tweaked to mimic cellular membranes can separate carbon dioxide from natural gas and could help reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, scientists say.
The technology, detailed in the Oct issue of the journal Science, might also be modified to isolate natural gas from decomposing garbage or filter impurities from water, the researchers say. [...]
WASHINGTON: Economic growth has made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increase much faster than expected, as trees and oceans struggle to absorb the greenhouse gas, scientists said in a study published on Monday.
“Atmospheric carbon dioxide growth has increased 35 percent faster than expected since 2000,” said a statement from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), [...]
CHICAGO: Scientists have figured out a way to trick plants into doing the dirty work of environmental cleanup, US and British researchers reported on Monday.
Researchers at the University of Washington have genetically altered poplar trees to pull toxins out of contaminated ground water, offering a cost-effective way of cleaning up environmental pollutants. A group [...]
TRIENT VALLEY(Switzerland): The Trient glacier looming ahead of me on a trek through the Alps this summer looked very different to the frosty heights that once provided ice for pastis drinkers in France.
Now the bare, eroded rock is testament to the ice’s retreat under the warming effects of climate change. In the 19th [...]
LONDON: A series of giant pipes in the oceans to mix surface and deeper water could be an emergency fix for the Earth’s damaged climate system, the scientist behind the Gaia theory said on Wednesday.
James Lovelock, whose Gaia hypothesis that Earth is a living entity has fuelled controversy for three decades, thinks the stakes [...]
WASHINGTON: Tropical rainfall is on the rise, NASA scientists have said.
Using a 27-year-long global record of rainfall assembled by the international scientific community from satellite and ground-based instruments, the scientists found that the rainiest years in the tropics between 1979 and 2005 were mainly since 2001.
The rainiest year was 2005, followed by 2004, 1998, 2003 [...]
Cosmic Snapshots
We saw in the last article that the earlier phases of the universe would have been very hot and filled with particles of high energy. This has led to an influx of ideas from high energy particle physics that has enriched our understanding of cosmic evolution. One such idea which [...]