Earth
- Climate
Mount Kilimanjaro could soon be bald
The world-renowned ice caps could disappear by 2022, new research suggests.
- Chemistry
Aerosols cloud the climate picture
A NASA model incorporates how atmospheric aerosols and greenhouse gases interact, yielding better estimates of the gases' warming and cooling effects.
- Earth
Unicorn fly of the Cretaceous
An ancient fly discovered trapped in amber sports a horn atop its head and topped with three eyes.
- Earth
World’s longest cave formation still growing
Minerals still accumulate in New Mexico’s Snowy River.
- Chemistry
How leaves could monitor pollution
Trees near high-traffic areas accumulate tiny particles.
- Climate
Winter forecast: Sustained blizzard of climate news
At least in our area of the country, consumers are already being assaulted — well before Halloween — with Christmas music, decorations and holiday-themed goods. Reporters are smack in the throes of their own early seasonal blitz: News items carrying a climate or global-warming theme. And I don’t expect the crush of climate news and seminars to diminish until around Christmas. That’s when the next United Nations COP — or Conference of the Parties — will end this year’s pivotal round of negotiations in Copenhagen aimed at producing a new climate treaty.
- Earth
Johnstown Flood matched volume of Mississippi River
A modern survey of terrain determines flow rate of the 1889 flood that was one of America's deadliest disasters.
- Agriculture
Report tallies hidden energy costs
The average retail cost of U.S. coal-fired electricity was 9 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2007 (the most recent year for which data are available). But there are health and environmental costs of that power that consumers don’t pay, at least as part of their electric bill. According to a new report, accounting for those costs would double the true cost of shooting some electrons through the nation's power grid.
- Agriculture
Update: U.S. swine infected with swine flu
Well, it's official. Over the weekend, Agriculture Department scientists found evidence that at least one pig exhibited at this year's Minnesota state fair was infected with the pandemic H1N1 strain of swine flu.
- Agriculture
Of swine flu, pigs and a state fair
To date, federal monitoring has yet to turn up any U.S. pigs infected with the killer swine flu strain known as H1N1. But Agriculture Department Secretary Tom Vilsack announced yesterday that his agency’s veterinary labs would be reexamining whether any of the apparently healthy pigs exhibited last August 16 to Sept. 1 at the Minnesota state fair might have been infected with the virus. Why? “An outbreak of 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza occurred in a group of children housed in a dormitory at the fair at the same time samples were collected from the pigs,” USDA notes
- Climate
Carbon emissions: Trend improves, but …
Sometimes what’s bad for the economy can be good for the planet. Or so argued Lester Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute, yesterday. This environmental trend spotter pointed to several developments that may have escaped our attention as the global economy alternately sputtered and entered periods of freefall throughout the past 18 months. Trend one: U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, have taken a tumble.
- Climate
Giant snakes warming to U.S. climes
Some were pets whose bodies and appetites apparently got too big for their owners to support. Most are probably descendants of released pets. Today, thousands of really big non-native snakes — we’re talking boa constrictors, anacondas and pythons — slither wild in southern Florida. And there’s nothing holding them in the Sunshine State. Which is why a report that was released today contends they pose moderate to high ecological threats to states on three U.S. coasts. Indeed, the homelands of these snakes share climatic features with large portions of the United States — territory currently inhabited by some 120 million Americans. Based on comparisons of the temperatures, rainfall and land cover found in the snakes’ native range, it’s possible that these slithering behemoths could stake claims to territory as far north as coastal Delaware and Oregon.
