Scientists track the evolution of HIV virus using genetic analysis. It’s an example of how advances in analysis techniques lead to better understanding of how desease spreads.
Green Schools Offer Healthier, Smarter Classrooms
In Plenty Magazine, Samantha Cleaver reports that “as baby boomer-era school buildings become more and more outdated, many districts are building green schools to replace energy guzzling, polluted learning environments.”
China's Birth Defects Soar Due to Pollution
Reuters reports that “Birth defects in Chinese infants have soared nearly 40 percent since 2001, a government report said, and officials linked the rise to China’s worsening environmental degradation.”
Deforestation in Amazonia
Tropical forests in Amazonia are being cleared rapidly, representing an important contribution to land-use and land-cover change. This is a thoughtful article of the history, economic and environmental impacts of Amazonia deforestation.
How Do You Ski if There Is No Snow?
Imagine a ski resort whose chairlifts are in the lower reaches of mountains without decent snow. Or a scuba club whose reefs succumbed to warmer and stormier seas. Or a golfing hotel in a district where water shortages made it impossible to keep fairways green. Climate change is affecting the world’s tourist industry.
Uncertain times for climate change
Research shows improving climate models and understanding will not necessarily reduce uncertainty in climate sensitivity and that a relatively small change in climate processes could lead to extreme climate sensitivity.
Wildfires move Canadian forests from sink to source
Increase in frequency and size of fires affects carbon-absorption properties of boreal forests. “The recent several decades of wildfires are changing the boreal forest from a weak carbon sink – that is the forest and soil are accumulating carbon and helping offset rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration – to a weak carbon source,” Stith Gower of the University of Wisconsin … Read More
Floods in Southeastern Mexico Displace Hundreds of Thousands
Days of heavy rains inundated southeastern Mexico in late October and early November 2007, causing massive displacement of people. Mexico’s president Felipe Calderón calls the flood one of the worst natural disasters in the nation’s history.
Move over wind power, here come the tornadoes
Canadian inventor patents the Atmospheric Vortex Engine that uses excess heat generated by power plant to create a vortex from which pressure at the base of the vortex is used to drive a turbine and generate electricity.
News: Massive California Fires Consistent With Climate Change
The catastrophic fires that are sweeping Southern California are consistent with what climate change models have been predicting for years, experts say, and they may be just a prelude to many more such events in the future – as vegetation grows heavier than usual and then ignites during prolonged drought periods.